
FT MEADE 
GenCol 1 


3I11III111 

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library of congress 


0001 *^ 3=16326 



Class P X. % 

Book — J1 9:4-7 0 
Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


V 




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ON AND OFF 
THE BREAD WAGON 





ON AND OFF 
The BREAD WAGON 

BEING THE HARD LUCK 
TALES, DOINGS AND 
— ADVENTURES OF AN “ 

AMATEUR HOBO 

BY 

CHARLES DRYDEN 

AUTHOR OF “BILL BARNACLE," 

“SWANSON, ABLE SEAMAN," ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

HY. GAGE 

-> > 3 ) 
i > 

3) ) 

PUBUSHERS 

STAR PUBLISHING COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


TRADE SUPPUED BY 

THE REILLY & BRITTON COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 17 1905 

- Copyright Entry 

Oc^.ho, 1 90S' 

CL o, 



COPYRIGHT 1904 
BY CHARLES DRYDEN 

COPYRIGHT 1905 
BY STAR PUBUSHING COMPANY 


ON AND OFF THE BREAD WAGON 


* « 
f < c 


C r » 


CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS 


CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

A Look Backward to His First Journey Into the 
Great Wide World and Some Experiences of His 
Tender Years — The Effect of Clothes on Human 
Nature 9 


CHAPTER II. 

His First Efforts as a Promoter and the Failure of 
Two Mining Ventures 19 

CHAPTER III. 

How His Longing to Become a Great Actor Gave 
Him Some New Views of Life , and How He 
Didn’t Go on the Stage 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

At the Age of Seventeen He Cuts Loose Into the 
Wide World, as Seen in Omaha, and Buys an 
Oyster Stew 47 


CHAPTER V. 

He Takes up His Residence with His Boss, an Eng- 
lish Molder , Who Goes on a Wild Shopping Expe- 
dition and then Tries to Freeze Himself to Death 57 

5 


6 


Contents 


CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

This Time He Attends a Polish Wedding and Meets 
a Lady With a High Instep — Some Observations 
on the TJse of Box Cars When Traveling 71 

CHAPTER VII. 

A Chapter in Which a Weird Ride on a Mississippi 
Steamboat and a Companion in Distress Figure . . 83 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A Notable March to the Sea Which Eclipsed That 
Made by General Sherman , and Some Pious 
Thoughts for the Wayfarer 95 

CHAPTER IX. 

He Makes His Debut as a Food Passer on a Steam- 
boat and Develops a Taste for Yellow Journalism 
in His Capacity as a Pancake Editor 106 

CHAPTER X. 

Tells How He Started in to Swing Texas Around 
by the Tail , and How Some Boyish Dreams Were 
Dispelled 118 


CHAPTER XI. 

Finding Himself Canned in a Texas Swamp, the 
Hobo Digs His Way Out With a Shovel 133 


Contents 


7 


CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 


The Friendship of a Horse is a Good Thing , But the 
Human Breastworks Business is Not 147 

CHAPTER XIII. 

How He Bid Adieu to Texas and Aided and Abetted 
Another Boy in Search of Keen Adventures 158 

CHAPTER XIV. 

A Chapter Wherein He Found New York Too Big 
and Vast, so They Put Him Off at Buffalo . .... .172 

CHAPTER XY. 

Back to Mudville to “Accept a Position,” and Away 
Again to the Wilds of the West 185 


CHAPTER XYI. 

Scratching Gravel With a Mormon Outfit, Building 
Railroads in the Idaho Desert 196 

CHAPTER XVII. 

A Problem in Rapid Transit and How It Was 
Solved with the Aid of a St. Vitus Dance Man’s 
Example and a Hobo Outfit 208 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Chapter Wherein the Bread Wagon Goes to Sea, 
but Soon Decides that Land is Better 220 


8 


Contents 


CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

The Hobo Comes Ashore With a Bum Lamp and 
Ships as Pilot on a Canal Boat 231 

CHAPTER XX. 

A Maiden Seeks His Hand in Wedlock , but He Side- 
steps the Proposition 242 

CHAPTER XXI. 

He Babbles Some in Art , Ends His Hobo Career , 
and Becomes a Chicago Journalist 254 


ON AND OFF 
THE BREAD WAGON 

CHAPTER I. 

A Look Backward to His First Journey Into the 
Great Wide World, and Some Experiences of 
His Tender Years — The Effect of Clothes on 
Human Nature. 

At the age of five years, quite a while before 
the hobo instinct steered me into serious trouble, 
I first enjoyed the delights of travel— of going 
somewhere and seeing things. The preliminary 
dash was made in a family bobsled over a twelve- 
mile straightaway course in the middle of winter. 
Time, the late 60 ’s, which date is close enough for 
the purpose of this confession. 

It was not the scenery en route that stirred my 
nomadic blood, for I failed to observe any. The 
tribe to which I belonged was migrating out of 
season— in other words, moving from the farm 
where I occurred to a little mud-streaked village 
in Western Illinois. As for the town, it was then 
on the map, and it submits that fact as an excuse 

9 


10 The Bread Wagon 

for being there still. There is no accounting for 
the tact of some towns. 

What landscape, if any, invited inspection along 
that frozen twelve-mile route is lost to me forever. 
Family complications bungled the trip, in my case, 
at least. Exclusive of parents, there were eight 
little sunbeams — six of us in the original package, 
and a job lot of two— father having married a 
second time. And don’t forget the furniture. 
Children, parents and chattels were massed in one 
stupendous aggregation in the bobsled. This over- 
worked vehicle was an ordinary farm wagon box, 
with supplementary side boards, set on snow run- 
ners and propelled by a pair of low-pressure 
mules. 

Of course, we were somewhat crowded in the 
cabin— not a soul had room to speak, in the words 
of that old McGuffey School Reader poem. It 
wouldn’t do to lose any children, and furniture 
was even more expensive at that period. So we 
ail stuck together, some stowed right side up, and 
some wrong: I held a position near the bottom of 
the load, with my neck resting on the ruffled 
bosom of a zinc washboard. For years afterward 
I wondered what had made me so cold and dismal, 
not to say clammy. The wisdom that comes from 
rubbering eventually set my mind at ease, but not 
until I had observed the metal lining they put in 



11 


ice boxes. It’s a wonder I did not become an 
Arctic explorer. 

However, since that day I’ve got it in the 
epiglottis many a time and oft while touring. Had 
I known then what is up to me now the zinc 
washboard would have proved futile as a deter- 
rent. What is bom in the blood must come out 
in the box car. 

On reaching the village father handed the mules 
a couple of swift kicks in the slats, by way of ap- 
pearing at ease in the presence of total strangers, 
and proceeded to discharge cargo. Being an im- 
partial and busy stevedore, he unloaded his assets 
as they came to hand— first a joint of stovepipe, 
then a child, followed by a bundle of bed slats 
and an inf ant daughter, until his earthly posses- 
sions reposed in a picturesque pile on the side- 
walk. When father separated me from the wash- 
board among the sediment at the bottom of the 
load, one side of my neck resembled the blue con- 
certina much esteemed by Swedes. We all were 
somewhat cramped and frost-bitten, but glad to be 
city people, just the same. I’m willing to admit 
that breaking into the Four Hundred has its draw- 
backs. 

The farm so cruelly deserted, twelve miles 
away, was situated on the county line. This I 
knew from hearing father speak of it, and, as 


13 


The Bread Wagon 

county line sounded good to me, I featured it in 
my language, using appropriate gestures on the 
side. The frequency with which county line but- 
ted into informal chats with the village boys con- 
ferred upon me a pleasing foreign air, extremely 
rare in those parts. What a traveler I was in 
those days— a regular cuss on runners ! The bug 
that made me a hobo was working in my system. 

Another rough and ready trait of the tourist 
early developed was my utter refusal to pose as 
a fashion plate at Mudville, 111., for garb cut no 
ice with me. When I was ten years old, father 
ordered built for each of his two sons a beauti- 
ful cozy cloth cape. Those duds were dreams un- 
til we tried to wear them in the presence of other 
boys, when said garments became nightmares that 
shriveled our wretched little souls. The night- 
mares had pockets inside, and were lined with 
red flannel, crimped around the bottom like the 
edge of a pie. It baffles a boy to stow his fists in 
unseen pockets. Let the more subtle female intel- 
lect cope with the puzzle-page pocket. She has 
more time. 

Every Sunday father martyred us in the 
capes, after fastening paper collars to horn but- 
tons, sewn on the neckbands of our shirts, of 
which we each had one. Then he led us to the 
gate and pointed in the direction of Sunday 


14 


On and Off 


school, and it meant a loss of cuticle if we failed 
to come back with the text. Around the first cor- 
ner, in front of the home of a very wealthy 
man, stood a cord of wood. There brother and I 
paused and peeled, bundled the capes into small 
wads and stuffed them into the woodpile. The 
cloth was the color of oak with the bark on, and 
no one ever spotted our Sissy regalia. 

Many a day when Mercury flirted with Zero 
me and Bill made a grand triumphal entry at 
Sunday school, arrayed in the paper collars and 
a purple smile. As the senior of Bill and the 
originator of this dress reform movement, all 
I lacked was a tin can like Happy Hooligan’s to 
put me in right. The large, warm, old ladies who 
taught the classes looked at us and wept. They 
said it was a crime to send a field of selling plat- 
ers away from the post to such a start. However, 
these remarks never touched me and Bill, for 
our souls were serene in cold storage. On the 
way hack me and Bill made another lightning 
change at the woodpile, and took chances with 
the gang on the home stretch of one short block. 

It is the dearest wish of my life that parents 
who haberdash male offspring contrary to the 
boyish idea of the eternal fitness of things and 
clothes will read this wail and take a much- 
needed tumble. Don’t tog your son like a freak, 


15 


The Bread Wagon 

which freak, to his mind, is the girl. If you can- 
not dress Harold as he sees other boys dressed 
let him wear an Apache G string and be happy 
while he may. The Lord never intended him for 
parental torture. He will get what’s coming to 
him, all in good time and plenty of it. 

Another pale, studious lad in that town wore 
a plaid shawl skewered beneath his chin with an 
iron bolt which had a large moss agate knob at 
the end. Also he wore a pair of high-heeled, thin 
Morocco shoes, supposed to be his mother’s, 
laced all the way to the top. That boy has since 
won international renown as a skirt dancer, and is 
now a sedate man of family and a creator of milli- 
nery at my old home. Yet the plaudits of the ten- 
twenty and thirty brought him no lasting joy, for 
the great white light of fame still beats upon 
the name of Sis. He never will be able to smoth- 
er it. Loie Fuller, the boss serpentinist of all 
ages, likewise came from Mudville, 111., and yet 
I do not recall Loie as a maiden tripping blithe- 
ly to school in overalls and one suspender, which 
attire her smouldering genius should have de- 
manded. 

But a short time ago I visited Mudville and 
noted among other improvements the rehabilita- 
tion of a late harness shop. The end had been 
blasted out to make room for an entire plate 


16 


The Bread Wagon 

glass front inscribed in tall letters of gold : 
Dunkerr, Parisian Importations. Though that 
magic name rated one more R than he could af- 
ford when a boy, I felt in my bones it was Sis, 
who had reached that pinnacle of earthly great- 
ness which permits a man to monkey with the 
spelling of his name. Pausing outside the lid 
works, under pretense of admiring the creations 
in window display, I peeked inside. 

The centre piece in a bewildering symposium 
of Oriental grandeur was Sis, lolling in a low 
rocker planted on a Turkish rug. His brown hair, 
brushed well back, revealed a placid brow, care- 
free and unwrinkled by thought, time or trouble. 
The years had wrestled gently with Sis. Dia- 
monds blazed on the fingers that once did duty as 
handkerchiefs, and his sylph-like person was 
arrayed in summer toilet— negligee shirt waist 
of white silk— row of diamond studs and Byron- 
ic collar; and as he rocked and hummed a little 
tune his nimble needle created a delicate bit of 
tatting work. 

Ranged in hanging balconies near the ceiling 
half a dozen female slaves toiled and fretted, 
building Parisian Importations so that Sis 
might strut in jewels and fine raiment. It was 
too much. The boy who wore the shawl had 
other people working for him, while I, who hid 





17 


l/W 


18 


The Bread Wagon 

my cape in the woodpile, lurked outside the 
palace an aged, bald-headed, baggy-kneed galoot 
who had burned up the better part of his life 
chasing freight trains and foundry jobs. 

After a while I went in and met Sis. He was 
so glad I called he told me the story of his life 
while the enslaved milliners on the giddy perches 
above looked down and giggled softly. I re- 
lated a few chapters myself, but didn’t allude 
to the cape epoch in my career. Somehow I felt 
I had lost out. As a skirt dancer Sis starred 
in London, Paris, Berlin and at the Winter 
Palace at St. Petersburg, On the London cir- 
cuit he had skirted, so to speak, as many as four 
music halls in one night, dashing about in diaph- 
anous silk folds and a cab from place to place. 
With the wealth thus acquired he settled down 
at Mudville to a congenial life of easy quiet 
and independence. 

Twice per year, spring and fall, Sis visits 
the wholesale millinery plants at Chicago, on 
which occasion, it is said, he wears a plug hat 
and feather boa. I was too sick at heart to 
hang around and see him start, and besides it’s 
a cinch I wouldn’t have laughed. To a matured 
vision many good things lose their wonted zest. 


CHAPTEK II. 


His First Efforts as a Promoter and the Failure 
of Two Mining Ventures. 

Primitive man dug holes in the earth, being 
too dopey to build skyscrapers, and boys of 
every generation since that epoch have burrow- 
ed under the crust in order to succeed as smug- 
gler chiefs and bandit kings. Mudville, 111., 
harbored a bold and hardy race of cave dwellers, 
whose repertoire had about petered out when 
the Mudville Mining and Manufacturing Com- 
pany got busy on a flat stretch of prairie near 
the village. 

That concern sunk a mine shaft and took out 
fire clay and coal which blended in the har- 
monious production of brick, pottery and drain 
tile. The black smoke could be seen for miles, 
and it painted fresh ambitions in budding minds. 
At the age of twelve I promoted two wildcat 
mining deals, the first of which proved a boom- 
erang. The second assayed one mild mannered 
cow belonging to a widow, and a series of short 
school vacations on which I could draw at sight. 
Moreover, the stockholders in my company de- 
19 


20 


On and Off 


dared themselves in on the dividend, and an 
era of prosperity struck the town. 

The amateur mining craze first broke out in 
our own back yard. There was nothing to it, I 
thought, but a neat little coal business at home, 
and perhaps a pottery on the side. When the 
idea blossomed, I spoke to my younger brother, 
Bill, about it. 

“What’s the use of digging where there ain’t 
no coal?” inquired the practical Bill. 

That is where the promoter gets up against it 
always. The trouble with Bill was he lacked 
imagination. Why shouldn’t there be coal in 
our hack yard if he only thought so? Bill was 
a peppery kid, full of force long before Sunny 
Jim’s time, and would make a valued assistant 
in the mining venture. 

“If I prove there is coal in the lot will you 
help me dig?” I asked Bill. 

He said he would, and I soon convinced that 
easy mark, being a natural-born promoter my- 
self. Reading was my only vice at that date. 
In order to get at the books I buncoed the War- 
ren County Library Association in the most 
cruel and sordid manner. Twice each week in 
winter I toted half a ton of coal in buckets up 
three flights of stairs from a cellar under the 
sidewalk. The librarian was a very old man 


21 


The Bread Wagon 

with two cork legs, and on that account he was 
ashamed to he seen carrying the coal himself. 

In return for my trifling service the librarian 
gave me a book privilege ticket, good for six 
months, and worth $1.50. It makes me blush 
even now to think how I swindled that poor old 
man, but , I was like the drunkard away from 
his can. My very being thirsted for choice mis- 
cellany, useful facts worth knowing and light 
summer reading in winter. A deep and soulful 
longing for knowledge made me desperate, and 
I soon picked up a lot about coal — in buckets. 

Well, I had read of the divining rod, and with 
that bit of witchery I worked Bill to the limit. 
First I salted the onion bed just west of the 
raspberry patch, by planting a flat lump of coal 
six inches underground and marking the spot. 
Then with an apple twig in the form of a Y, 
the easy Bill was led to his doom. He followed, 
pop-eyed, while I trailed about the garden, hold- 
ing the divining rod by the double ends, with 
the stem .of the Y pointing straight ahead. At 
the proper place the magic stem bent down- 
ward, and I whispered hoarsely to Bill: 

“Dig here for treasure!” 

I allowed him to dig, and when Bill uncovered 
the lumps of coal, he became lit up with the 
most gorgeous blaze of enthusiasm I ever be- 



22 


I Found the Coal with a Divining Rod. 


23 


The Bread Wagon 

held in a human being. That was promoting 
some, all right. Bill wanted to dig on the night 
shift, too, but I wouldn’t let him. In a few 
days we sunk a shaft five or six feet deep and 
ran a drift off to one side in search of the 
mother lode. To support the roof of the tunnel 
we knocked the rain water barrel to pieces, 
sawed the staves in half and braced them up 
with timbers taken from the family woodpile. 
This was the only time we ever tackled the buck- 
saw in the role of little volunteers. 

The tunnel had drifted in all of ten feet when 
our male parent and provider came home. His 
little boy miners led him forth and pointed with 
pride to the hole. He looked about at the yel- 
low clay smeared over half the fertile garden 
spot on which he had lavished money and ma- 
nure. We expected loud outbursts of praise. In- 
stead, father asked quietly: 

“Did you boys dig out all this dirt?” 

“Yes, sir,” we chorused. “It was my idea 
and Bill he-” 

“Very good,” father broke in. “And now let 
me see you put it all back— every grain— or 
I’ll bum the pants off you both.” 

That was the bitterest jolt of my young life up 
to date. Bill all but collapsed, for he believed 
in the coal fiction and my superior divining rod 



24 





Father Carefully Inspected That Clay. 



25 


The Bread Wagon 

wisdom. We buried the dirt in the grave of 
blasted hopes and directed the obsequies all 
alone, for no other boys bad been let into the 
digging and we couldn’t expect help. It was 
awful work filling up the tunnel, pushing in the 
dirt with a hoe, and when that job was com- 
pleted a period of depression fell upon the ama- 
teur mining industry at Mudville. 

Later on in the season, being a resolute pro- 
moter, I launched the second venture. One 
square away lived the two Wilson boys, who 
luckily, had no father to butt into their vast and 
worthy enterprises. The Wilson boys readily be- 
lieved the coal vein I found at home extended 
to their place, and a new company was formed 
to mine the stable lot of the Widow Wilson 
without securing from her a concession to the 
mineral rights. 

The new company proceeded on a mammoth 
scale, rating a president, board of directors and 
a row of numbered pegs in the bam on which 
to hang our mining clothes. A committee ap- 
pointed to steal a batch of miners’ lamps from 
the pottery made good with a dozen, one for 
each stockholder. Though all the digging was 
done before and after school in the broad glare 
of an effulgent Illinois sun, we wore the lighted 
lamps on our brows just the same. Nothing 


26 On and Off 

was too good for the Dryden-Wilson Mining- 
Company, Limited. 

In a short time we sunk a square shaft six- 
teen feet deep, using a windlass and bucket to 
hoist out the dirt and coal, when we struck it. 
The tough clay sides of the shaft needed no 
boxing, else the world might have lost a bunch 
of bright intellects in a premature mine horror. 
In the event of accident to the hoisting gear 
the shaft boss rigged an emergency ladder, built 
of two sixteen-foot fence boards borrowed from 
the widow. These boards were set upright 
against one wall of the shaft and fitted with 
rungs nailed on. 

At this point in the development of the mine, 
the Lamp Committee, being unable to steal any 
powder, the stockholders were assessed for 
enough to blast out a tunnel. By unanimous vote, 
blasting was deemed more romantic than digging, 
and the price of one pound of fine rifle powder 
fairly flowed into the treasury. 

A broomstick drill was used to bore a hole 
pointing downward at an angle of 45 degrees in 
the south wall of the shaft, two feet above the 
bottom. We tamped dirt on top of the powder 
and left a string of firecracker fuses hanging 
out for the match. Then arose a question of 
nerve to touch off the blast. Marsh Sloats, a 


27 


The Bread Wagon 

husky lobster, six feet tall, at the schoolboy age, 
said he would do it in a jiffy. So we lowered 
him in and hauled up the bucket, his idea being 
to escape via the safety ladder, after firing the 
fuse. 

While the daredevil Marsh was below the 
stock company withdrew to a vacant lot across 
the alley. He applied the match and climbed 
the ladder, the rungs of which were bits of lath, 
securely spiked to the uprights with tacks and 
second-hand shingle nails. Just as the head of 
the intrepid Sloats poked out of the hole the 
rung on which his fat feet rested broke off. The 
fall jerked loose the slat in his grip, and down 
he went with an awful burring sound, clutching 
at and kicking and ripping away every rung 
from top to bottom. 

Silence more appalling than sound followed 
the thud when Marsh hit bottom; then came an 
anguished shriek of terror and calls for help. 
The shaft erupted the agony of young Sloats 
entombed with the blast, while we stood par- 
alyzed watching for his atoms. Marsh begged 
his father and mother and an uncle who lived 
in Nebraska to save him. He cursed the com- 
pany for not lowering the bucket, but mortal 
fear held us in a pallid group across the alley. 
The fuse had burned in beyond the reach of 



28 


Whirling Spirals of Smoke Shot Up. 



29 


The Bread Wagon 

his fingers, and it was up to the boss blast 
toucher to take what was coming to him. 

When it came a whirling spiral cloud of white 
smoke, punctured by one hideous yell, shot up 
from the shaft. At the summit of the cloud, 
twenty feet in air, rode Marsh’s limp straw hat. 
That was all. Nothing more— not even a sound 
—boiled out of the shaft, so the more courageous 
directors sneaked to the edge and looked down. 

Sloats sat with his back braced against the 
wall, and was mining dirt out of his eyes, mouth, 
nose and ears, using his fingers for picks. The 
language that flowed from him dispelled the sul- 
phur fumes and deadly after damp. As the fren- 
zied blaster couldn’t see very well, the company 
took a desperate chance, hoisted him up and scat- 
tered like a flock of quail. He was able and 
willing to lick the whole bunch, and we knew it. 
The tough clay confined the loosely tamped 
powder, and the bulk of the discharge, like that 
from a gun, had passed above him, and Sloats 
was not damaged, except in his pride. Our first 
and last blast failed to uncover any coal, yet the 
powder was not wholly wasted. 

Next morning before daylight Roger Wilson, 
the mine boss, routed me out. His mother’s only 
cow had fallen into the shaft over night and 
broken most of her legs, her neck and her spine 


30 


On and Off 


in three places, so Eoger said in tragic whispers. 
Anyhow, the cow was a corpse, and Eoger was 
doing a Paul Eevere ride on foot, passing a hurry 
call among the directors for an urgent meeting 
at the mine. 

In the pale gray light of dawn a crowd of 
terror-stricken kids stood about the hole and 
peered in at the cow, who seemed to be standing 
on her horns. To the dullest mind present it 
was apparent that dead cows have no value, 
while live hoys must look to their future. There- 
fore, since the Wilson cow was dead and buried, 
all but the covering up, there was no sense get- 
ting her out and creating needless sorrow 
scenes among the women and children at the 
mouth of the pit. So we filled in the shaft with- 
out pausing for breath, and took the oath of 
secrecy on a tin dagger above the unmarked 
grave of that careless hut worthy bovine. 

Of course, the widow missed the cow, and a 
lot of diligent, self-sacrificing boys were willing 
to give up their studies and help the widow’s 
sons seek that which was lost. The board of di- 
rectors, to a boy, responded nobly, and for 
weeks parents wrote excuses to teachers on be- 
half of the cow. Singly and in groups the re- 
formed coal diggers spent whole days in the 
bosky dells and sylvan glades adjacent to Mud- 


31 


The Bread Wagon 

ville, carrying popguns, lunch and angle worms 
in tireless search, but so far as I know the cow 
was never found. 

At the same time the mishap at the mine 
thwarted my career as a mining promoter, and 
I’m glad of it. The love of fishing acquired and 
fostered during the futile probing of the Mud- 
ville Cow Mystery is now the one solace of my 
declining years. I had rather fish and lie than 
be rich. One day, perhaps, in future ages, ex- 
cavators will come upon the skull and bones of 
a prehistoric Mudville man buried sixteen feet 
under ground. Should this narrative be pre- 
served, it may aid the archaeologist. 


CHAPTER III. 


How His Longing to Become a Great Actor Gave 

Him Some Neiv Views of Life, and How He 

Didn’t Go on the Stage. 

Before leaving Mndville behind in this series 
of confessions it may be well to tell of the only 
time I ever bulged with longing to become a great 
actor and wear a fur collar on my coat. My earl- 
iest impressions of the drama, which hinged on 
Orphans and the gay butterfly life they led, broke 
out in me at that uncertain age when infants are 
first addicted to thoughts. Every kid at some 
time or other maps out a stage career. 

Ridiculous as it now seems, I fairly pined 
with desire to shine as an officially declared or- 
phan and be given away to some kind family after 
doing jay towns in a special car. My brother 
Bill shared this lofty ambition. We both wanted 
to become orphans and win renown on the lyric 
stage, and would have done so, perhaps, had not 
Bill crabbed the proposition. Never let relations 
in on any scheme dear to the heart. They’ll 
queer it either through stupidity or pure cussed- 
ness. 

The heralded approach of one carload of or- 
32 


We Both Wanted to Become Orphans and Win Renown on 

the Lyric Stage. 





33 






34 


The Bread Wagon 

phans, assorted sizes and sexes, shipped out from 
the slums of New York to Mudville, 111., for dis- 
tribution among childless Christian homes, set the 
small brains of Bill and I in a dizzy whirl. Our 
joint fund of information concerning the orphan 
business was somewhat limited. It fired us with 
the spirit of emulation to learn that some children 
like ourselves— they called them orphans— were 
speeding Westward, ho ! behind a snorting loco- 
motive and would pull off a highly moral and 
entertaining show in the town. 

Some dope to that effect was handed out by 
the Sunday school superintendent. The troupe 
would entertain with dialogues and Moody and 
Sankey hymns in the Methodist church, during 
which those in need of orphans would inspect 
the band and pick out some trouble. A New 
York mission society had engaged in the noble 
work of scraping mislaid waifs from abodes of 
squalor and misery and mixed ale of the metrop- 
olis and finding them a refuge in the hospitable 
homes of the Middle West. 

Many towns and villages in that plenteous 
region threw open their doors to the little strang- 
ers. Car after car did the mission send out, un- 
til thousands of firesides and reform schools 
reared refractory monuments to forgotten dead 
in distant burial grounds. But the supply far 


The only Strictly Proper Specialty for Star Orphans on the 


* 






35 












36 


On and Off 


exceeded the demand. In time the tide of East- 
ern orphans flowed elsewhere, but not until 
Mudville had done its duty by listening to a 
Moody concert in Sankey repertory and prompt- 
ly adopting the entire batch. 

Pending the arrival of the private car and its 
distinguished contents, me and Bill talked in our 
sleep, mostly about orphans, and dreamed night 
and day of what we should do when successfully 
embarked upon a similar career. The theatrical 
features of the business alone appealed to us— 
the wild, tumultous ride in the cars, the street 
parade behind a band and the plaudits of admir- 
ing congregations. Bill was stuck on doing a 
blackface turn, while I held that a genteel song 
and dance in pink velvet knee breeches and flow- 
ing cuffs was the only strictly proper specialty 
for star orphans on the road. 

This point was still unsettled when the talent 
arrived one sharp autumn night, and me and 
Bill, quite purple with ingrowing excitement, 
set off to see the show. We wore our Sunday 
school regimentals, and, busy with the thought 
of a glorious future, ran all the way to the 
church, except for a brief halt, occasioned by 
Bill. Before starting he carefully entombed 
both arms to the elbows in his trousers pockets. 
Thus we sprinted along side by each, as broth- 


37 


The Bread Wagon 

ers should, until we struck a crossboard side- 
walk, which sometimes flew up in sections and 
smacked people in the face. 

There I trod on the end of a loose plank the 
fraction of a second before Bill arrived at the 
other. His toes caught and forward he plunged 
along the raspy boards on his tender frontis- 
piece. The slide peeled a wide, thick strip of 
skin from his forehead, nose, lips and chin, and 
also ruffled the epidermis on his wishbone. Had 
my brother a flat face to start with there wouldn ’t 
have been any of it left. Bill’s hands, being 
safely stowed in his pockets during the mishap, 
escaped injury. 

When we reached the church the tousled, blin- 
ky orphans stood in a sort of minstrel first part, 
singing their young lives out. There was no 
applause and neither did I see any bouquets 
passed over the footlights. It was a bum show 
from a spectacular view. The little band was 
in charge of a tall narrow man, the pallor of 
whose face was heightened by the inky blackness 
of his beard. At the end of the first song he 
handed each child a voice troche and gulped one 
himself. I attributed his bleach to the troches, 
but more likely basket lunches and blue mass 
pills had much to do with that drumhead com- 
plexion. 



Singing their Young Lives Away. 


38 


39 


The Bread Wagon 

For some reason the show fell with a D. S. 
thud. It must have been on account of Bill, who 
certainly did not appear at his best. No matter 
which way he turned, Bill seemed to be peeping 
roguishly out from behind a blood-red post much 
too small for him. And the pine splinters 
sticking to his tear-gummed cheeks did not en- 
hance the boyish beauty of my only brother. 
When the adopting exercises opened two or three 
women turned Bill down— said no doubt his 
parents were murderers and that the police of 
New York had done the worst thing possible in 
shipping him out West. 

Finally a dear, dim-eyed old lady, who had 
known him all his life, wiped Bill’s skinned nose 
and offered him a Christian home and burial of 
the same kind in case he needed one. At that 
he got mad and swore out loud in the Methodist 
church, thinking he had a right to do so be- 
cause we were Presbyterians. I chided Bill 
with a left hook, and when the sexton got to us 
we were locked in a brotherly clinch under the 
pew next to the pulpit. The chill night air of 
the street killed the last theatrical germ in our 
systems, and so far as I know, Bill never made 
another attempt to go on the stage. Neither 
did I. 

One of the male orphans who lodged in our 


40 


The Bread Wagon 

midst was a born financier, being, quite likely, 
the unclaimed progeny of an Eastern captain of 
industry. That he missed the Wall street train- 
ing of his ancestors was plain, for the first dash 
into the realms of trade landed him in jail. Had 
the boy remained in New York and been brought 
up in the way he should go, its dollars to break- 
fast food he would now be at the head of a trust. 
He had the merger principle and he knew how to 
corner everything in sight. 

This orphan was adopted by a Christian fam- 
ily and he used the piety of those foster parents 
to cloak his vile conspiracy. A little Mudville 
man, who desired merely to live, opened a little 
restaurant. Every night or so the orphan de- 
scended on the home of the restaurant man and 
stole a chicken, which he sold, through an accom- 
plice, to the caterer. With the proceeds of the 
sale the orphan feasted on fried chicken at the 
cafe next day, paying for the same with the coin 
the proprietor had coughed up for his own poul- 
try. Besides the chicken, the villain absorbed 
vast quantities of mashed potatoes and gravy, 
bread, butter and liquids, for which the caterer 
had paid out money to people who did not dine 
there. And for every cash meal the orphan got 
one on credit. 

There was but one result. The restaurant 



42 


On and Off 


blew up, leaving the proprietor nothing in the 
way of assets but a pile of parboiled feathers in 
the back yard. Our gifted financier went in for 
thirty days, but that didn’t help the caterer. He 
was plucked. If this expose of the grasping 
orphan is of any assistance to Mr. Hearst, the 
noted Trust Buster, he is welcome to it. There 
are no trusts at Mudville. 

I will gloss gently over the one regretful pe- 
riod of my life — the time sacrificed in the aca- 
demic halls of Mudville. The only lasting benefit 
gained at that process was a pair of bowlegs 
caused by carrying heavy lunches to school. 
Some of the boys in my class even failed to im- 
pair the shape of their legs, which makes me 
think I did pretty well after all. The temple of 
learning harbored nothing of interest to me, ex- 
cept my dinner pail and the soft pine desk of 
that day. On the lid of many a desk I carved 
my name after the manner of transient guests 
who registered at the water tank near the de- 
pot. But for this early amassing of useful 
knowledge and the anatomical curves I would 
not mention the schooling. 

When I was 14 the family agreed it was time 
to make good on the lunches by feeding my own 
features. The idea was not original with our 
folks. It has been worked before. As under- 


43 


The Bread Wagon 

study to a fat iron moulder I joined a get-rich- 
quiek concern that paid me $3 per week for ten 
hours’ toil per day, right off the reel. All I 
had to do was fashion moulds in sand and pour 
hot metal into them. Easy money. It isn’t ev- 
ery country boy who picks up a snap. Some of 
us are exceptionally bright in the matter of avoid- 
ing the gilded goods. 

For three years I did blackface turns in a 
pile of black sand, learning the trade. Not a 
few of the cast iron stove legs I built when a 
boy are still leaving footprints on humble kitchen 
floors— enduring tributes to my budding genius 
in the gentle craft of moulding. Whatever bad 
breaks since made in other lines cannot wipe 
out the fact I was a fair to middling moulder 
at the finish. 

Those were happy days in the foundry, be- 
cause I had not learned to loathe the perverted 
genius who invented work and forgot to take 
out a patent on it. Being an enthusiastic kid, 
I carried home bags of sand and moulded 
things— mostly lead nickels— in the cool of the 
evening. But there was no demand for that 
sort of coin, and I closed up my mint at the 
suggestion of the village ice cream man, who 
had a pull with the constable. 

Ambition stirred me, too, for I hoped to be- 



o 


I Closed Up My Mint. 


44 


45 


The Bread Wagon 

come a Foreman some day, and sit for hours 
on a nailkeg, thereby staggering common work- 
men with the belief that I knew so much about 
the trade it made me ache to carry it around. 
That dream was only a pipe which soon went 
out, hut my name appeared in the directories 
of several large cities linked in small type to 
the words, Iron Moulder, and the street num- 
bers of fierce boarding houses. So I am not 
utterly unknown to fame, after all, a feeling 
shared by the man who has once seen his name 
in print, though the occasion for it be nothing 
more than a Delinquent Tax List. If we are 
to have greatness thrust upon us, nothing can 
stop it. 

While the majority of moulders are steady 
men with large families and other minor troub- 
les, a hobo mechanic now and then fell off a 
passing freight train and asked for a job in 
our shop. This struck 'me as an ideal existence, 
skating around the world with a Union card, 
unhampered by care or baggage, in search of a 
fresh sand heap. Like the tramp printer, the 
moulder carries little more than his hands and 
trade; the shop supplies the rest. 

One white-haired ruin who lingered for a grub 
stake at Mudville had wrestled with a touch of 
jimjams in most manufacturing towns of note 


46 


The Bread Wagon 

on the map, and had not yet wound up his itin- 
erary. To me he was a regular Christopher 
Columbus of a moulder— a man to emulate in 
all save the flowing bowl specialty. Drunk or 
sober, his only enemy was the shop foreman as 
a class, and, for the life of me, I couldn’t see 
why because that hoary old hobo was such a 
nice man. 

In course of time the foundry and the village 
became too tight for me. I felt like a No. 10 
foot in a No. 8 shoe, and imagined I had corns 
on my intellect. They say that is the way of all 
young fellows, in whatever walk of life, who 
are full of tabasco at the start and think they 
can bat .300 or better in the big League. So at 
soft seventeen I slipped my cables and set forth 
to ebb and flow on the tide of events like a wa- 
terlogged corncob in a dead eddy. 


CHAPTER IV. 


At the Age of Seventeen He Cuts Loose Into the 

Wide World, as Seen in Omaha, and Buys an 

Oyster Stetv. 

Kidded along by that sublime faith in hu- 
manity common to extreme youth and the pur- 
chasers of gold bricks, I cut loose at the age 
of 17 with the unknown world as contained in 
Omaha, Neb. What I knew of the iron mould- 
ers’ trade absorbed at Mudville, 111., didn’t pain 
me any, and the prospect of not finding jobs most 
anywhere never touched me. Had I desired to 
procure employment things might have been dif- 
ferent. 

Moreover, I carried a package of hot air in 
an unsealed envelope, presenting Master C. Dry- 
den, Esq. My strictly original To-Wliom-it-May 
Concern was compiled by the village postmaster, 
an elderly, one-legged gentleman, who did not 
train with my gang; hence he could safely say 
I was a loo-loo both in and out of the foundry. 
He did it in elegant Youth’s Companion lan- 
guage. 

Besides this valuable asset I rated a $2 trunk 
made of some kind of bark which had worm holes 
47 


48 


On and Off 


in it. The outside was armored with the very 
best wall paper of a subdued yellow pattern. 
On the inner side of the lid appeared the por- 
trait of a bloated Cherub wading around in a 
bum bouquet that barely came up to his waist. 
The trunk had a lock which yielded readily some- 
times to expert manipulation of a tin key, but 
I relied more on a safety device of my own, pas- 
sed twice around the middle and tied in a hard 
knot. This idea has since been infringed by per- 
sons lacking original thought. 

The pedigree of the trunk is thus recorded 
here because it soon eluded me, and many years 
elapsed before I owned another. Eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of trunks, and likewise valises, 
among the poor and foolish. The mere fact of 
going to bed in order to place anything of value 
under lock and key did not, in my opinion, 
class the trunk as an also-ran. My position 
in society seemed more firmly established when 
I raised the lid and looked at the Cherub. In 
time a fellow can do without baggage, when he 
gets trained down to it. 

So it came about that one winter day, with 
the trunk masquerading as baggage and me 
bumping the red plush in a varnished car, we 
bore down on Omaha. En route through Iowa 
I studied the whisker exhibits installed on de- 


49 


The Bread Wagon 

pot platforms, there being nothing else worth 
looking at. The leading export of the State 
at that time was Prohibition literature, while the 
inhabitants raised whiskers for home consump- 
tion. Also, I observed experienced travelers in the 
coach drinking from bottles. These alcoholic 
festivities made me feel like a four-flusher. 
Having failed to provide a bottle of my own, 
I looked for the conductor to flag me at every 
milepost, on the ground that I had made a false 
start. That he tolerated one so remiss in his duty 
to society amazed me. 

Even now, after a lapse of twenty-five years, 
this problem racks and puzzles. Why will the 
man who spends a decade at home, never thinking 
of liquor, load up with a quart canteen and souse 
himself silly on a forty-mile ride 1 ? Search me. 
Does the motion of the train arouse latent thirst, 
or does the gent think the neck of the bottle pro- 
truding from his raiment brands him a traveler 
of world- wide repute! Funny, isn’t it, what 
muffs you meet while flitting from State to State, 
either on foot or among the late Mr. Pullman’s 
plush. 

Early on the morning of the second day the 
train reached Omaha and allowed me to mingle 
in the fierce metropolitan whirl. I left the trunk 
at the depot for a look around before doing any- 


50 


On and Off 


thing rash. It was great— the air of being a 
gay young man about town, strutting proudly 
along paved streets. Most of the people looked 
like Employes, and I was glad fate had carried 
me to the right place. There was no reason why 
I should not become an Employe and write to 
my friends at home letters bearing the postmark 
of a large city. The growth of this idea made 
me chesty. I chucked caution to the winds and 
decided to risk eating something, even before mak- 
ing my debut as an Employe. 

On the rounds of the town I had located in 
a side street a swagger cafe, bearing this sign: 
“The Delbeano; Mrs. J. Bunk, Prop.” At the 
curb stood an inverted wooden wedge in blue, 
adorned with this legend: “Meals 15 Cents and 
Upward,” which direction, I have since learned, 
is, or should be, the natural course of meals 
taken at that price. In the show window a 
_ small pink china pig was mired to its knees in 
a plate of uncooked beans— a subtle lure set by 
Mrs. Bunk to entrap the Boston tourist. 

On pushing open the blue door, a bell tink- 
led above the portal, and I glanced back to 
see who was ringing it. The interior Delbeano 
was a gaunt room harboring a few tables and 
a port-holed partition at the back, through 
which the ambushed cook fired victuals at un- 


51 


The Bread Wagon 

wary patrons. There were two vivid works of 
art on opposite walls. One was the likeness of 
a fat man, inscribed “I Eat Here.” His part- 
ner on the other side, a haggard gentleman, 
who looked like Mr. Dante, did not eat there, 
according to his epitaph. Where he did re- 
plenish his inner being will forever remain a 
mystery to me. Below the thin man hung a 
business motto, “No Trust, No Bust,” worked 
in red worsted on perforated cardboard. 

While noting these appetizing specialties I be- 
came conscious of a Human presence in the 
room. At a table in the rear sat a razor-faced 
female of middle age gazing fixedly at me out 
of snaky eyes. Her face was without expres- 
sion save the black sparks that glowed at either 
side of her beak. As she looked at me I tried 
to look in another direction, and failed. Once 
I made a bold point at the No Trust, No Bust 
poem, but fearing this effort to appear natural 
might lay me open to unjust suspicion, I switched 
to the epicure who ate there. The undoubted suc- 
cess of that person induced me to sit down and 
open a bill of fare which resembled a ball pro- 
gramme minus the lead pencil. 

Pretty soon the lady of the house came over, 
placed one hand on my table and the other on her 
hip, meanwhile piercing me with her gimlets. 
















«r 


52 




53 


The Bread Wagon 

Once I glanced up, and she merely pointed one 
untidy finger at the bill of fare. To save my neck 
I couldn’t think of anything but stewed oysters, 
the only hot food ever served at the Bon Ton Bes- 
taurant in my town. The wits were scared out of 
me, and still I didn’t know why. Finally I said 
“oysters” in a voice inaudible to myself. Had I 
been a man of brains and wide experience in din- 
ing out, it would have been Ham and Eggs right 
off the reel. 

Aiming her face toward the rear, Mrs. Bunk 
yelled, “One stew!” and then leisurely placed 
some tools and a dish of cold slaw on the table. 
Meanwhile, no sound had come from the kitchen. 
The order was not bellowed hack in true metro- 
politan fashion. In a little while Mrs. Bunk strol- 
led into the culinary works and instantly there 
issued the stealthy rattle of pots and a sound of 
some one raking the fire. Soon the dark-eyed lady 
emerged wearing an air of extreme abstraction. 
She went to the front window, shifted the pink pig 
to an easier position among the beans and gazed 
.into the street. Having me in her toils, that siren 
of the West worked her little game to the limit. 
Once she did face about to shriek, “ Hurry up that 
stew; the gent’s a-waiting!” No response. 

Once more Mrs. Bunk ducked into the kitchen: 
again I heard the sneaky rattle of pots and beheld 


54 


On and Off 


her skinny hand when she slid the bowl upon a 
shelf in the open partition. Moreover, I recogized 
the voice when she stepped back and shouted, 

“Stew r-r- ready take it away!” Again she 

came forth in a walking trance and moved about, 
brushing phantom flies off the tables. All of a sud- 
den she saw the bowl and made a dash for it, and 
as she sped by me the swish of her starchy skirts 
sounded like splashes of rain against a window. 

With the stew in front of me and that pallid 
flim-flammer seated in her original chair, the pic- 
ture of unconscious virtue and innocence, my first 
feeling of fear gave way to indignation bordering 
on wrath. Did she take me for a lobster? Well, 
I should hope not; but all the same she had me 
g’oing for a while. Whether or no the lady kept a 
cook didn’t matter three hoots in the hot place so 
far as I was concerned. I never had monkeyed 
with oysters save at church sociables at Mudville, 
where everything was square and aboveboard. To 
find that passive bivalve used as a medium of 
deceit annoyed and disgusted me. And the bold 
trick of that brazen Mrs. Bunk bred in my tender 
bosom a distrust for the sex which endures to this 
day. 

The oysters were good. After throwing in the 
warm poultice, I produced a roll fit to choke a 
canary bird, gave Mrs. Bunk a scornful look, and 


55 


The Bread Wagon 

the price, and went out the blue-front door never 
again to darken it. 

It was a long while before I got over the jolt 
produced by the unparliamentary conduct of Mrs. 
Bunk. Why should she act that way? Food ever 
has been and always will be the same to me, 
whether prepared by chef, proprietor, general 
manager, cashier or floorwalker, so long as the 
viands are properly cooked. The world was new 
to me then and everybody and everything in it 
strictly on the level until I bumped into Mrs. J. 
Bunk, of Omaha, Neb. By that one false stroke 
she forever queered my faith in females and the 
sincerity of their motives on any proposition. 
Whenever the gentle passion flickered in my heart, 
which it sometimes did, there came a warning 
vision of Mrs. B. and her bunco oyster stew, and I 
at once grew cold and frosty toward the sex. Can 
you blame me? 

No one ever saw a male caterer pull off any such 
fool performance ; it isn’t in him. Man is prone to 
pride in duality without duplicity on the side. 
Witness scores of little eating joints in every city 
—mere slits in the wall, mostly. Bow of stools at 
one side of a counter ; range, grub and gear on the 
other. A fat slob of bilious aspect, in cap and 
apron that used to be white, cooks and washes 
dishes in full view of his victims and glories in 


56 


The Bread Wagon 

his versatility. Sometimes the dew of strenuous 
endeavor mingles with the cuisine, hut what of 
that? There is no attempt to deceive, to create an 
impression of absent quantity, and the entire pro- 
cess is conducive to calm serenity of mind and un- 
impaired digestion, for a few years at least. 

I have made much of this boiled oyster incident 
because, coming as it did at the very threshold of 
my youthful career, it put me up in the clock for 
the time being. There was I, a lonesome boy, far 
from home, willing to be a friend to anyone who 
would befriend me, and dependent upon the labor 
of my hands and feet, provided I hit it right. The 
first human with whom I came in contact was a 
woman who should have been a mother to me. In- 
stead, she handed me a gold brick with a spoon in 
it, leaving me a melancholy prey to suspicion and 
moody distrust. 

The proper study of mankind is man; it is the 
women who keep us guessing. 


CHAPTER V. 


He Takes up His Residence With His Boss, an 
English Holder, Who Goes on a Wild Shopping 
Expedition and Then Tries to Freese Himself 
To Death. 

In the course of one day I recovered from the 
jar occasioned by female duplicity in the restau- 
rant; forgot all about it in the great good fortune 
of becoming not only an employe, but a Boarder 
in a large city like Omaha. That was hustling 
some for a half-baked kid away from home the first 
time. My job lay in a foundry on the outskirts of 
the town, and the boss moulder, moved to pity by 
my youth and innocence, took me to live in his own 
select family at the rate of four ace notes per 
week. 

My roommate was the Irish gentleman who 
chopped up and melted the pig iron at the foundry, 
and we were very good friends indeed. When we 
entered the boudoir together it was necessary for 
one of us to crawl under the bed, in order to make 
room for closing the door. Still, I enthused over 
my advancement in life. It isn ’t often a mere boy 
can become a Boarder and send out 20 cents’ 
worth of laundry nearly every week. 

* 57 


58 


On and Off 


Next to politics and the practice of law foundry 
work is the dirtiest job I know of, but the money 
is clean, and the moulder carries with him that 
respect which is one reward of honest effort. 
Moreover, the unplugged pores of the worker in 
molten metal filter his conscience. He can sleep at 
night and eat several pounds of liver and bacon 
at 5 o’clock in the morning. To be sure, this 
talent doesn’t make him rich. He seldom endows 
colleges and race tracks, but he is healthy and 
happy, and that helps some. 

The reason I’m able to blow so much hot smoke 
on this subject is that the iron foundry was my 
Alma Mater. My education— good enough what 
there is of it, and plenty of it such as it is— 
was amassed in those institutions, scattered over 
an area extending from Maine to California and 
from Canada to the Gulf. At one time all foun- 
dries looked alike to me, and it was a source of 
great pleasure and some food to be identified with 
one. Any old building will do for a foundry. 

Broken walls and roof and windowless windows 
for smoke and heat to escape in summer and to 
admit the cold in winter. Clammy earthen floor, 
piles of black sand, huge gibbet cranes, with rasp- 
ing chains and open moulds; great pots of liquid 
iron swing in the air, spluttering furnaces that 
shoot constellations of hot stars and sulphur fumes 


59 


The Bread Wagon 

into the dull atmosphere, heat that cracks the skin, 
explosions of gas and choking vapors, half-naked 
figures groping and steaming— hell with the lid on. 

So fervid is the zeal of youth that all this was 
but the limelight of fame to me, and the dirtier I 
got the more popular I was with myself when 
visiting friends or the owners came in to look at 
the employes. Sometimes I wondered what those 
persons would say if they knew I boarded with the 
Boss. But that was too much to hope for so early 
in the game. 

From candle light in the chill winter morning 
until casting time in the evening I moulded the 
iron framework for modern school desks, then 
coming into vogue. Thus did the memory of pre- 
cious hours wasted at school come back to me, and 
I shoveled sand with increasing ardor to make up 
that lost time. The man next to me worked under 
a crane, the gearing of which did the heavy lifting. 
He made large iron arches to support the whale- 
back masonry in sewers, and I envied the greater 
quantity of sand he handled, with the expert aid of 
a Polish helper. 

Frequently when visitors were around I went 
over and leaned on the crane in picturesque atti- 
tudes and a pair of overalls, just as if the hoist be- 
longed to me and was about to strain itself lifting 
the top off one of my dinky molds. A dopey old 


/A 



Our Habit was to Bite Our Monograms in the Pie Crust. 


60 


61 


The Bread Wagon 

age makes me long for the foundries of my youth 
but, alas, they are gone. Once I gloried in my 
open pores, but now I beef because they boost my 
laundry bills. 

Not the least exciting items in my curriculum 
were the home and social sides of life in Omaha. 
I found both pleasure and comfort in the home 
circle and plunged into all the gaieties that came 
my way. The foreman, with whom I lived, was an 
Englishman, and his three sons had followed in his 
footsteps to the extent of being English and mold- 
ers. One of the sons— a boy of my own age— had 
trouble with his vocal chords. He thought- he could 
sing, which suspicion was shared by the entire 
family. 

At noon we all went home to dinner. For that 
meal the mother invariably set out to each man a 
robust English meat pie, or pasty, baked in a 
crust. Our habit was to eat all we could, bite our 
monograms on the top crust, and inherit the same 
pasty for supper. So thoroughly was this system 
maintained that during a period of four months I 
do not recall a single fight at supper. Each boarder 
got what was left of his own pasty, besides other 
things, and if he didn’t care for the pasty it could 
be placed on file and carried over to another meet- 
ing under the head of unfinished business. 

In other ways this good wife and mother knew 


62 


On and Off 


liow to make home attractive. She held the finan- 
ces, laid in the provisions and kept her husband at- 
home on Saturday night by a scheme more fasci- 
nating than any yet touted on the Woman’s Page. 
On Saturday night she gave him a dime for a 
shave, and when he came back with a manicured 
face she set him down to a small keg of beer in the 
kitchen. The keg was all his. Many a night I 
loitered with him until the keg yielded nothing but 
bubbles. Beer did not appeal to me then, but 
words of wisdom from the lips of that master- 
mechanic held me to a painful seat on a little stool 
close by the stove. He talked shop, and I liked 
that. Attired in shirt sleeves and slippers the old 
man sat stiff-backed and alert, with the keg lying 
on a chair in front of him. One hand held a short 
stemmed garbage burner, and in the other he sup- 
ported a half gallon tin pail with one horny finger 
hooked over the rim. His patient wife stood by 
hearing a fistful of pipe lighters made of twisted 
paper, for the oracle was too busy to strike 
matches. For hours he drank from the pail and 
told stories of shops he had bossed, of strikes and 
people he had licked, and of his early days in 
England, all of which was of massive interest to 
me. If,' by mistake, he carried the pipe to his 
face the alert wife stuck a paper roll into the 
stove and gave him a light. After one puff the 


63 


The Bread Wagon 

pipe was forgotten, and the tales rolled on until 
time to fire up again. 

When I think of it now that woman was a mar- 
vel. She actually delighted in turning the spigot 
and stoking the pipe, and she knew the stories even 
better than he, having heard them often enough. 
Sometimes Mommer coached Popper when he 
started a yarn in the middle or left out an impor- 
tant paragraph. If it were a funny story she gave 
me my cue to laugh at the proper place by burst- 
ing into a merry peal, whereat the old man’s eyes 
sparkled and he swore by the ghosts of Vulcan 
every word was gospel truth. 

By and by when the keg and stock of anecdotes 
ran dry she helped her man to bed, where he shook 
the roof bellowing the songs of his youth until he 
fell asleep. He had toiled and sweated all week 
and enjoyed a bully, bang-up time on Saturday 
night at trifling expense. He got tanked, did all 
the talking and pulled off a lot of goreless mind 
fights. And during the spree and when it wound 
up Mommer knew where he was, just what he had 
been doing and she had the weekly wage. The 
lady of the house knew her business. 

This system made a deep dent in my tender in- 
tellect, and I resolved, if destiny so shaped my 
future, to adopt it and become an ideal Toiler. But 
so far there is nothing doing. I don’t smoke and 


64 


The Bread Wagon 

the man in the white jacket turns the spigot for me. 

One Saturday night following a snowfall of 
three feet, and in the height of a blizzard of ex- 
ceeding fierceness, our gentle landlady sprung a 
cliarley horse. Rheumatism put her out of the 
domestic game for that evening. Popper Thomas 
said he would take a chance with the storekeepers, 
SO 1 , with a list of verbal instructions covering one 
hour, he was sent off to do the marketing. With 
his side whiskers neatly curried and the light of 
noble resolve shining in his eyes, my boss de- 
parted, carrying two baskets and one $10 bill. It 
was long after midnight when the shopper re- 
turned minus the baskets, but bearing a load that 
was a peacherino. The success of his expedition 
to busy marts of trade awoke me and the rest of 
the Employes and aroused startled interest in the 
neighbors. 

Every item but one Mr. Thomas had purchased 
was concealed under his belt, yet we knew the 
exact nature of his contents. His face was adorned 
with a beatific smile and two unlighted cigars, 
with red and gold corsets on them. Mr. Thomas 
never used cigars except on special occasions, at 
which time he became a real sport. Removing one 
of the cigars, my boarding boss shifted the other 
hard aport, and started to warble a plaintive ditty 
about a blooming sparrow that crawled up a 
blooming spout. 



His Face was Adorned with a Beatific Smile and Two 
Cigars with Red and Gold Corsets on Them. 


65 


On and Off 

The lady of the house grabbed the shopper and 
shook him. 

“Is this the way I brought you up?” she de- 
manded. “Trained you by the kitchen fire, with 
your keg and your pipe. Where’s the money, the 
groceries and the baskets?” 

“There came a blooming rainstorm and washed 
the blooming sparrow out,” sang Mr. Thomas, 
with a faraway look in his eye. 

“Husband, what did you do with the baskets?” 
implored the exasperated lady. 

“Smashed ’em in a fight,” said Mr. Thomas, 
emerging from the realms of melody. ‘ ‘ Eight scab 
boilermakers tackled me, and I licked ’em all. 
And when the blooming sun came out and dried 
the blooming rain, the bloody, blooming spar- 
row — ’ ’ 

With desperate fear at her heart, Mrs. Thomas ' 
shoved her mail into a corner and searched him. 
He yielded nine cigars— five of them broken and 
the rest bent — and one half pound can of salmon, 
with a picture of the fish’s face on the can, like 
that of the man who makes the talcum powder. In 
a dim way Mr. Thomas had thought about us while 
shopping, and the salmon was to tide a household 
of twelve over a frozen Sunday in the wilds of 
Omaha. He was a good provider. 

It was much too much. Mrs. Thomas gave vent 


67 


The Bread Wagon 

to a cry of rage and despair and threw the can at 
her husband’s head. Her opening shot was wide 
and high. The can crashed into a pictorial Family 
Tree on the wall and jarred three generations from 
the branches. This was doing pretty well, as the 
slaughtered relatives belonged to his side of the 
house. A return shot by Mr. Thomas, whose aim 
was not steady, broke the tail off a plaster of paris 
pug dog viewing the carnage from the mantel. 
Whoever got the can first had the next throw. 
Five times the deadly canned fish hurtled through 
the windows, but as the outside shutters were 
closed, the combatants got their ammunition back 
by reaching into the shattered panes. 

In the midst of the battle the woman fell back on 
her wrongs and burst into noisy tears. That was 
Popper’s cue, and, in a voice that dulled the storm 
outside, he said he was a ruined mechanic. 

“Disgraced and bulldozed in my own home, 
what have I to live for?” howled Mr. Thomas. 
“Nothing whatsoever. I’ll end it all!” 

Tearing off his coat and hat, the outraged parent 
and provider, pale with the resolve of death by 
his own hand, lunged out of the house and slam- 
med the door. 

“Help! Save him— Lewellyn, come back!” 
wailed the wife. “Oh, he’s killing himself. 
Help!” 



68 


We Found Mr. Thomas in a Drift, Surrounded by a Blizzard. 



69 


The Bread Wagon 

All hands hustled to the rescue. The gentleman 
who boiled the pig iron, two moulders boarding 
there, one son-in-law, three grown sons and my- 
self comprised the party. We found Mr. Thomas 
standing in a drift surrounded by the blizzard. 
One leg, slightly in advance of the other, was bent 
at the knee, and his arms were folded across his 
chest. In the ghostly light of the storm he resem- 
bled Mr. Washington standing in the bow of the 
boat the night that hero crossed the Delaware. 
Snowflakes falling on Lewellyn’s hot bald scalp 
melted, trickled into his hair and froze. His flow- 
ing side whiskers retained the snow, with lace cur- 
tain effects, until his face presented a bird’s-eye 
view of a parlor-window. 

“Don’t touch me,” Mr. Thomas said, in hollow 
accents, as the rescue party closed in. “I’m freez- 
ing myself to death.” 

“Oh, Lewellyn, don’t do it,” begged the wife. 
“Come in by the fire, like a good man.” 

“Never!” hissed Mr. Thomas. “I freeze to a 
corpse right here. Farewell.” 

Turning so that the blizzard smote him in the 
teeth, the suicide waited for the end. I was ap- 
palled, never having witnessed violent death in 
any form. But ere his gentle spirit fled two sons 
fell on Popper from behind. The rest tackled 
him all over, and in a few minutes the back yard 


70 


The Bread Wagon 

was cleared of snow and Mr. Thomas. Snatched 
from the brink of the grave and bestowed by the 
fire, with the loving arms of his wife about him, 
Mr. Thomas shed some sloppy tears. 

He had been cruelly abused in his own home, 
but bore no malice. Forget and forgive was his 
motto, and Lewellyn made good by falling asleep 
and forgetting that he ever lived. All this hap- 
pened so long ago that I forget just what did 
become of the can of salmon. 


CHAPTER VI. 


This Time He Attends a Polish .Wedding and 
Meets a Lady With a High Instep— Some Ob- 
servations on the Use of Box Cars When 
Traveling. 

Social diversions other than being a Boarder in 
the home of my Boss were open to me at Omaha 
during the merry winter season. I was a popu- 
lar young fellow in my set ; so one Saturday night 
I cut out the keg and shop stories to be among 
those present at a Polish wedding. Up to that 
time I never had witnessed a marriage ceremony, 
but was more or less familiar with some of the 
dire results. 

Murder, failure to provide, suicide and ali- 
mony I knew, often followed the golden chime of 
the wedding bell; but that was the fault of the 
newspapers. They had no Advice to Lovers, no 
department of Health Stunts for Girls and How 
to Manage Husbands in those uncouth days. The 
high contending parties knew little of each other’s 
moods and temperaments, and so rushed blindly 
into compacts productive of much woe. Thanks 
to the benign ideas of modern journals and the 
71 


72 


On and Off 


industry of their matrimonial dope compilers, we 
seldom hear of troubles in that line. All hands 
now live happily ever after. 

The gentleman who took the count in this in- 
stance was an honored member of our staff in 
the foundry, and the only Pole in the bunch. 
With keen insight into the social requirements of 
his set, Mr. Blevitsky pulled off his nuptials on 
Saturday night. This is an open date in the 
work-a-day world, leaving guests the whole of 
next day to sleep off the effects of weddings and 
other functions. 

Mr. Blevitsky was a nice but somewhat un- 
healthy looking young man. He had an abundant 
crop of pimples, a nose like a window awning 
and no chin to speak of. I often thought if Mr. 
Blevitsky would mobilize his pimples in the right 
place he could build himself a pretty respectable 
site for the knock out blow. For days prior to 
the ceremony, and while toiling in the shop, he 
did nothing hut laugh. What it was about I 
never did learn. No doubt Mr. Blevitsky knew 
his part. It behooved any man in his position to 
lay up laughs against a time when this form of 
diversion becomes naught but a melancholy 
memory. 

My unfortunate shopmate perpetrated his wed- 
ding in a saloon in the Polish settlement. There 


73 


The Bread Wagon 

was nothing to distinguish the saloon from places 
of similar resort, which are built by the mile and 
sawed off in sections to suit the needs of pub- 
licans, grocers, shoe dealers and haberdashers in 
new towns. Mr. Blevitsky chartered the place for 
a long term of hours and installed a band con- 
sisting of two cornets and one slide trombone. 
The happy man had served one wedding break- 
fast, dinner and supper, and had set out the sau- 
sage and ice cream for another breakfast Sunday 
morning when the police felt obliged to be among 
those present. 

The nuptial feast raged all day Saturday and 
had several laps to go when I butted in at 10 
o’clock that night. Yellow lights blinked dimly 
in the foggy atmosphere and the bridegroom’s 
special band was tooting away on an independent 
scale. Everything in the saloon was free by 
courtesy of Mr. Blevitsky. Large numbers of 
married men were there, accompanied by their 
invalids, and scores of little children played 
among the sawdust and cigar butts on the floor. 
There were young people, too, but I didn’t know 
any Poles or Polish. However, Mr. Blevitsky 
pressed me to his white waistcoat and treated to 
a bottle of pink pop in the presence of the multi- 
tude, which put me in right with the elite. The 



The Bridegroom was Quite Drunk and Bleary, Yet 
Affable Withal. 


74 



75 


The Bread Wagon 

bridegroom was quite drunk and bleary, yet affa- 
ble withal. 

His bride w T as a small, swart maiden, witli a 
little face and big hair, and she had on all the 
clothes she ever owned— a habit they acquire 
coming over in the steerage. When Mr. Blevitsky 
formally presented me the bride arose, made a 
weary bow, and sank limply into her seat. Mr. 
Blevitsky beamed with love, beer and tenderness. 
Placing one arm around my neck, he drew me 
aside and told me about the bride in accents that 
left no doubt of his absorbing passion. 

She was very tired, he said. According to her 
wont, and against his express order, she had 
gone out at 5 o’clock that morning with a gunny 
sack to pick up coal on the railroad track. But 
what could a man do! She had come back with 
more than a bushel and they were married at 10 
o’clock. Moreover, he had secretly inspected the 
coal and there wasn’t a single clinker among it. 
In a further burst of sloppy confidence, Mr. Ble>- 
vitsky opined his wife was a jewel — a woman of 
whom any man might be proud. 

Everybody danced, after a fashion, and then 
sidestepped to the bar the minute the band gave 
out. Mr. Blevitsky superintended the whole busi- 
ness and sopped up most of the loose liquid on 
the counter with the sleeves of his wedding trous- 



76 


She had Gone at Five O’clock in the Morning to Pick Coal. 


77 


The Bread Wagon 

seau. He was the life of the party. For mine, 
I rubbered and soaked up impressions that cling 
to me still. 

Along toward midnight I became absorbed in a 
bean-colored young woman— to her own notion 
the happiest one in all that glad throng. She sat 
midway at one side of the hall opposite the bar, 
wearing that expression of proud and defiant 
agony seen in pictures of Christian martyrs 
burned at the stake. Her symptoms had puzzled 
me for an hour or so when it dawned that she 
was the Lady with the High Insteps. Like a 
statue she posed — her slippered feet thrust for- 
ward so as to star the insteps. The tension in 
her limbs necessary to arch the feet was so great 
L could see the muscles bulging under the ball 
dress, and the loose hair about her temples was 
submerged in moisture. Many a man has stum- 
bled over the high instep to his everlasting sor- 
row, but instead of falling in love with that 
maiden I yearned to hand her a couple of swift 
kicks on the ankles. 

Nature and cramps at length called a halt in 
this exhibition of maidenly charms. The high- 
instep lady keeled over in a faint, and the entire 
assemblage of Poles, big and little, talked at the 
same time. In the confusion incident to this 
divertisement a furtive Swede, unbidden to the 


78 


On and Off 


feast, drew from beneath his chair an immense 
accordion and started to drag therefrom a dismal 
tune. Somebody threw a cream puff which hit 
the Swede in the eye. The pastry stuck just long 
enough for me to observe how much the Swede 
looked like a watch repairer at work, then hos- 
tilities became general, and a fusillade of food 
and furniture put the pacificos to flight. 

There wasn’t much furniture available for long 
range fighting, so the combatants drew on the 
larder. The three Polish musicians and the 
Swede mixed it hand to hand with their instru- 
ments, and the guests, hurling victuals toward 
this common centre, soon involved the whole com- 
pany. Mr. Blevitsky, with a boiled goose in each 
hand, battled nobly for a cause shrouded in some 
doubt. It was time for trouble, and solely on 
that account the bridegroom sailed in and did the 
best he could. 

When the lights were all knocked out, the fight 
shifted to the sidewalk, and was still raging when 
the police got there and cracked a lot of skulls. 
The Swede escaped, and the Polish orchestra was 
among those locked up. It is ever thus. The 
man who butts in and makes trouble for others 
manages to slip out unhurt. Still, Mr. Blevitsky ’s 
wedding was a huge and unqualified success. 
They took nine stitches in his scalp. And the 


79 


The Bread Wagon 

lady with the High Insteps never knew she had 
put her feet in it, so to speak. 

Early next morning, impelled by that morbid 
curiosity ever dominant in the student of human 
moods and passions, I strolled past the scene of 
the late nuptial disaster. There wasn’t much 
doing, yet I felt repaid by a glimpse of the saloon 
proprietor wrestling with the aftermath. Mounted 
on a stepladder and armed with a putty knife, he 
was scraping lemon meringue pie, layer cake and 
cheese from the building front, meanwhile dis- 
coursing to himself in quaint Polish accents. 

It may be fitting to observe here that while 
social gaieties epidemic in Omaha at that time 
were not so recherche as similar affairs at New- 
port and on Fifth avenue, they were not without 
interest to the police. At one they batter heads; 
at the other the cops repel souvenir seekers who 
would rip the garments off the bride or bite 
chunks from the iron railings in front of the 
church. 

The only place a fellow can get wedded with- 
out police surveillance is in one of those spots 
untouched by the blight of civilization. Be he 
millionaire or mutt, this getting married is a 
dangerous operation, which should only be at- 
tempted as a last extremity when ill or out of 
work. In time I may lose my number and decide 


80 


On and Off 


to pay gome good woman a salary to make trouble 
for me, but that possibility is too remote to worry 
about. 

. After the wedding I applied myself to mould- 
ing with renewed industry. One of my first plays 
was to pick out a preceptor— a sedate and fin- 
ished mechanic of mature years, whose mode a 
youngster might copy and thus become perfect. 
Mr. Spruce, champion all-round sand pounder, 
the man who made the large flywheels and dry 
sand cylinders, filled the bill to my notion, and I 
copied him. In two months I was a second edi- 
tion of this Eoyal Arch moulder in mechanical 
grace, style and execution. I even spat like Mr. 
Spruce. 

Anything he did I did, and felt I couldn’t go 
wrong. Mr. Spruce saw he had scored a touch- 
down back of goal with a lobster, and the knowl- 
edge pleased him, for he hypnotized me with tales 
about an engine bed plate he once cast in Sacra- 
mento that weighed sixty-four tons. Helpers 
hoisted him in and out of the sand mould with a 
derrick for a couple of weeks, he said, and when 
the plate was cast they had to tear the shop down 
to get it outside. 

That job placed him in the front row of the 
peach class, and I begged Mr. Spruce for his 
photograph. What Henry Irving is to the stage 


81 


The Bread Wagon 

butler this master moulder was to me, and I fairly 
worshiped the sand he handled. 

One evening after work Mr. Spruce, being a 
fatherly man with a good heart and kindly im- 
pulses, asked me to his home to supper. As we 
left the shop on the outskirts of the town a 
freight train came along. We climbed to the top 
and rode a half mile or so to the place where Mr. 
Spruce got off. Instead of descending the iron 
ladder and swinging to the ground after the man- 
ner of brakemen, he moved that we spring to the 
roof of a lonely box car standing on a parallel 
track and descend at leisure. I said all right and 
he led the way. 

Anybody but a lobster in the can knows that a 
brisk run on leaping from a moving train is 
necessary to maintain a dignified equilibrium, but 
I was in the clutch of a master mind. Two sec- 
onds after Mr. Spruce hit the roof of the station- 
ary car he was due to jump off at the far end, 
going full speed. He arrived on schedule time 
and so did I, one lap behind. The fall on the 
frozen ties below telescoped Mr. Spruce’s spinal 
column, and I broke my own nose and three of 
his ribs plunging down on top of him. 

Thus did an iconoclastic box car, painted red, 
shatter my first and only idol. Mr. Spruce went 
to the hopsital and when my nose subsided so I 


82 


The Bread Wagon 

could see around it I pulled my freight for the 
warm belt in Dixie. We never met again. Since 
then I have traveled on the inside, outside and 
underneath box cars without a chaperon, and 
never got hurt. This mention is made not as a 
proud boast, but as part of a mottled career. 


CHAPTER VII. 


A Chapter in Which a Weird Ride on a Missis- 
sippi Steamboat and a Companion in Distress 
Figure. 

Owing to a hitch in the programme, the good 
people of Memphis, Tenn., were not quite ready 
for me when I arrived there on the inside of a 
train during a tour of the world in 1880. The 
Mayor had mislaid the Key to the City, and the 
iron foundries hoisted the cold wave flag. Not 
a single foreman wanted a boy to raise, and be- 
fore a week ended I sassed myself for sidestep- 
ping Omaha. There I had a job and friends, and 
entree to the whirlpool of social gaiety as por- 
trayed by Polish weddings among the shop hands. 
Memphis was chill and sloppy. All hands turned 
me down, and my money sped swiftly, like the 
last car deserting a fat lady who is too excited to 
whistle. 

When the hope of becoming an Employe at 
Memphis blew up, I hung about the levee and 
looked at the river. Being too old and cowardly 
to turn pirate, I affected the stream for pastime 
only. The season was late in winter, and the 
83 



84 


Another Boy Helped Me Look at the River. 



85 


The Bread Wagon 

unlaundered Mississippi rippled along replete 
with chunks of honeycombed ice, the soil of adja- 
cent States in solution and an occasional streaky 
steamboat. Another boy, who said he had been 
bottling wine in California, helped me look at 
the river and the ice, and shared the frosts that 
nipped us in the town. 

We met by the river, he and I, and there was 
much that bound us together. Carl was but a 
detached unit in this great problem of ours in- 
volving 80,000,000 fatheads, and some that had 
subsided. I knew him little more than a week 
under adverse conditions, yet even now as I 
gaze upon the restless push, hustling and striv- 
ing for the dollar and the quick, unsatisfying 
lunch I often think of that sad, hungry boy 
alone on the bum until he met me. 

Carl was one of eleven, he told me in our 
calmer moments. I, too, had sprung from poor 
but prolific parents, and an unconscious bond of 
misery linked the busted wine bottler to me in a 
sort of brother stunt. Each was welcome to 
what the other didn’t have. 

Against his will, let us hope, Carl had cos- 
tumed himself like a German comedian in a little 
fried egg stiff hat, short trousers, low shoes and 
white socks. Whenever we ranged about the 
town Carl’s socks awoke languid interest in our 


86 


On and Off 


movements, and that was the best we got. Like 
myself he had abated his finances, quitting a 
good job for the excitement of hunting another 
in a strange place, and was then eager to starve 
to death in a warmer climate, provided he could 
reach one. 

I coincided in this view, and we pooled an 
issue. 

The German comedian roomed under a high 
sidewalk in the purlieus of the city, and took 
Window Board standing in front of a restau- 
rant that displayed steaks, chops and delicacies 
of the season behind thick glass. I occupied 
apartments in a river front hostelry at 15 cents 
per day, which did not include meals. These 
Southern cities know how to boom prices to the 
embarrassment of Northern tourists. My $2 
bark trunk that had set out from Mudville with 
me was at the hotel, and I assayed about $1.40 
in white metal— all that lay between us and the 
next town, which we agreed should he New Or- 
leans. The only tip either of us had on that 
place was the distance, which is said to lend 
enchantment at a high rate of interest. 

So Carl and I plotted to heat the river out 
of a pass to New Orleans, and herein is that 
scheme laid hare. 

For 90 cents I purchased a black tar-paper 


87 


The Bread Wagon 

valise with tin hasps and trimmings. In size, 
shape and general bearing this purchase looked 
more like a gas meter than anything I can now 
recall. Into the valise, we put a chunk of bo- 
logna sausage bigger than a bootleg, a bag of 
raw onions, and stuffed bread in the remaining 
space. My last cent went to victual the cruise 
of at least a week. The comedian voted the 
bologna into the grip, and I prescribed the 
onions, having read in nautical tales that the 
onion is the- best preventive of scurvy known to 
mariners. 

To properly dress for the part, I put on my 
shop clothes, including a blue flannel shirt, and 
stowed the rest of my outfit in the faithful bark 
trunk. With the help of Carl I carried the 
trunk to an express office and shipped it C'. 0. 
D. to New Orleans. 

An immense stern-wheel boat— the U. P. 
Schenck, from Cincinnati— offered inviting exit 
to a warmer clime. She carried furniture on 
the hurricane deck, baled hay on the lower, or 
boiler deck, and nails in kegs in the hold. 

Carl and I thought the hay looked good to us, 
so one evening at dusk, when no one was look- 
ing, we burrowed into the new mown. A row 
of stanchions from the boilers forward carried a 
canvas-covered steampipe to the engine aft, and 


88 


On and Off 


the hay was piled over and around the pipe. We 
crawled into this steam-heated flat, taking the 
food hamper along, and settled down for a nice, 
quiet voyage. 

Things went pretty well until the gentleman 
who chaperoned the hay sold us out. He had a 
vulgar habit of telegraphing ahead to riverside 
dealers, who purchased hay in bunches. Negro 
roustabouts with cargo' hooks disturbed our pri- 
vacy at all hours of the day and night, digging 
out consignments of baled hay. Layer by layer 
the coons peeled our happy home away. Fur- 
ther and further aft we burrowed, until at the 
end of the second day, we fetched up against the 
engine room bulkhead. There was no time to gnaw 
through that obstacle, so, rather than jump over- 
hoard, Carl and I admitted that we were dis- 
covered. 

A red-necked mate who had killed a dozen stow- 
aways, he said, laughed at Carl’s white socks, 
after which he took us before the purser, in 
the white and old gold cabin on the upper deck. 
In that gorgeous tribunal we heard our doom 
pronounced. It was either pay fare to New 
Orleans — $3.50 each, deck passage— or get off at 
the next landing. I glanced ahead through a 
window at the next landing— a muddy, oozy 


Red-Necked Mate who had Killed a Dozen Stowaways. 



89 



90 On and Off 

stretch of Arkansas shore, clouded in misty rain 
and sloping away into a swamp. 

Night was coming on. Here and there a live 
oak tree wearing long, gray whiskers— Spanish 
moss, I believe, is the tonsorial name— stood like 
a lost Rip Van Winkle in that moist and for- 
bidding wilderness. The only living being in 
sight was a rickety Uncle Tom seated on a 
bale of cotton in a two-wheeled cart, waiting for 
the steamboat. His mule, apparently, had died 
standing in shafts. And that was the place for 
us to get off, not. 

My heart ceased to beat, and I could hear a 
funny clicking noise in the comedian’s neck, like 
a duck choking to death. 

“Mister,” I said to the purser, “we haven’t 
any money, but wealthy relatives will meet the 
boat at New Orleans and pay all charges.” 

The purser peered out of his little box office, 
laughed brutally and said he couldn’t do it. 
Too many bums tried to work him on that gag. 

“Well, I’ll put up my baggage for security,” 
I pleaded. 

“Let me see it,” said the purser without look- 
ing up from his work. 

When I requested Carl to go below for the 
valise, he seemed about to throw a fit. He was 
even more of a Dutchman than his costume 


91 


The Bread Wagon 

would indicate, and the way our affairs were be- 
ing dented all but paralyzed him. All the same, 
the valise was bought with my money. Carl 
held an honorary membership in the sausage and 
onions, but I had a right to invest the gas meter 
as I saw fit, and he knew it. Capital is mighty 
and will prevail. 

During the absence of Carl I gazed at the 
negro porter, who stood guard— gazed at him 
with an intense and overwhelming Kock-of-ages 
cleft-for-me expression. If I did get by the 
purser with my little game, it was up to the 
porter to either make or break me; hut if he 
saw or understood the black man made no sign. 
He kept me guessing. 

Meanwhile the purser was busy writing in his 
coop, which had a little window ledge like a thea- 
tre office, opening into the main cabin. When 
my limp partner returned I took the valise, 
stood in the middle of the cabin and held 
up our only asset for the inspection of the 
purser. It looked pretty brisk and shiny in the 
half light, and my soul was uplifted when the 
man in the coop said: 

“All right; give it to the porter.” 

Carl’s eyes bulged, and he would have wept, 
only his mouth monopolized all the moisture in 
his head. He thought only of the sausage and 


92 


On and Off 


onions, without a spark of pity or compas- 
sion for the nervous strain I had undergone, 
saving his life and mine up to that point, with 
the porter yet to hear from. 

“There’s a little light lunch in the grip I 
would like to take out if you don’t care,” I ven- 
tured to remind the purser. 

“I don’t want your miserable lunch,” he gruf- 
fly replied, at the same time handing over a 
couple of deck-passage checks he had made out 
for us. 

Having so far succeeded as a strategist, I cir- 
cled about with the valise and placed it on the 
deck directly under the office ledge. The purser 
couldn’t see me unless he rose up and hung him- 
self across the opening, and, I saw no reason 
why he should do that, being, as I have said, a 
very busy person. When I opened up the meter 
the flow of gas choked the purser; at least I 
heard him cough and splutter. Quickly pass- 
ing what was left of the bologna, bread and on- 
ions to Carl I motioned him to sneak, and then, 
looking the negro porter firmly in the eyeballs, 
I handed him the empty 90-cent tar-paper valise 
and offered up a silent prayer. 

He took that, hollow, scented mockery in his 
strong right hand and actually walked lop- 
sided out of the cabin lest the purser might 


93 


The Bread Wagon 

be looking. Noble negro— fairest of his sex! 
I never saw my meter any more. Neither did 
Carl. By the time this transaction ended we 
had taken on the bale of cotton and were steam- 
ing away from that sloppy Siberian shore— from 
the whiskery live oak trees, Uncle Tom and his 
moribund mule— $7 to the good in trade on a 
legitimate deal. Little did I think at Memphis 
about laying up a cheap valise against a rainy 
day— and the drizzle was fierce. 

Carl and I huddled together that - night in 
a coil of rope on the dismal lower deck de- 
void of sheltering hay. Ever and anon Carl ate 
a slab of sausage, with a side of raw onion to 
ward off scurvy. My mind was too full for 
food. I thought of Abraham Lincoln and the 
great and lasting good the Great Emancipator 
had done for posterity on the pork. Next day 
I hunted up the negro porter and told him, 
with vast pride of voice and gesture, that I 
hailed from the same state — Mudville, 111. He 
didn’t know what I was talking about. 

The rest of the route to New Orleans was 
fraught with hardship and hunger. Long be- 
fore our commissary exploded damp weather 
coaxed out on the bologna a crop of soft blue 
whiskers half an inch long, and which greatly 
enhanced the appearance of the menu. How- 


94 


The Bread Wagon 

ever, beauty of that sort is only skin deep, and 
by peeling the bolonga we got the true meat and 
flavor. When the last fragment was gone, the 
midnight lunch of hardtack set out for the negro 
rousters kept us alive. Like alley rats we 
sneaked from gloomy recesses to the table back 
of the boilers, grabbed some crackers and crept 
away to nibble in the dark. Water is included 
in a deck passage, which is a good thing to 
know should you ever decide to take one. 

At New Orleans I went to the bad proper, and, 
single-footed and alone, pulled off a march to 
the sea that knocks General Sherman’s little 
stroll silly. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


A Notable March to the Sea which Eclipsed that 

Made by General Sherman, and Some Pious 

Thoughts for the Wayfarer. 

For about two weeks, at New Orleans, I tented 
on the old camp ground, a spot much esteemed 
by soldiers of fortune, nee bums. These tents 
are immense tarpaulins, with piles of perish- 
able freight for centre poles. No unsightly 
sheds incumber the miles of wharves and levees 
at this Southern port of call for tramps and 
ships, and they all find berths. 

The tarpaulins do double duty as sheds and 
also lodging houses for whites and blacks alert 
enough to elude the watchmen. River odors 
ooze up through the cracks of the wharves in 
the humid night, and the air-tight canvas cover- 
ing shuts in a soothing bouquet of tar, green 
hides, antique vegetables and the spices of Arab- 
ia and Africa. There is no color line on the old 
camp ground. 

A special providence, said to watch over idiots, 
drunken men and boys, provided me with shelter, 
but I had no meal ticket. And yet I can truth- 
fully assert that manna still falls in the wilder- 
95 


96 


The Bread Wagon 

ness for children of hunger, doubt and despair. 
Overripe bananas from the West Indies drop 
off the bunches in transit from steamer to wharf. 
Thus did I feed on manna that fell at my feet, 
for I always was right on the spot. It was 
necessary to be ever pecking, like a sparrow 
in the park, in order to keep the wrinkles out 
of my midriff, and I had little time to hustle 
for other business. 

As at Memphis, nobody wanted a cub moulder. 
Neither did the ship captains desire a commo- 
dore or dishwasher when I offered to sail the 
raging main with them. On many occasions I 
asked for a job as porter at wholesale houses. 
The usual reply held that my color scheme 
didn’t fit the theme, and it was a case of back 
to the banana belt in the wilderness for me. All 
I owned enveloped my small and enfamined per- 
son. Fifteen hundred miles lay between me and 
my be-it-ever-so-humble. My $2 trunk, shipped 
ahead from Memphis, was in hock at the ex- 
press office. Next door I had pawned by last 
asset, a wheezy silver watch, and I still hoarded 
the few dimes, lest accident befall the inward- 
bound banana fleet. Even then my intellect, 
such as it was, ranged far ahead, sometimes. 

Since the ships declined to carry me down to 
the sea, there was nothing left but to beat the 


The Alligator Sometimes Disputed my Way. 


f 



97 


V 










98 


On and Off 


ninety-nine mile stretch of railroad between New 
Orleans and the Gulf. I performed this clever 
feat hy limping along the track in light march- 
ing order, and thus got ahead of J. Pierpont 
Morgan for the first and only time in my life. 
I’ll bet it would sting him some now if he knew 
it. Three days and 15 cents’ worth of ginger 
bread were consumed in this spirited dash to 
tidewater and a new T life on the rolling deep. 
My only preparation for the journey was to take 
a farewell peep at the trunk in the express of- 
fice and time the start by the three golden balls 
next door. 

Nothing that Mr. Morgan has since handled 
in the way of stock was watered like this road. 
Much of the route is wormed through cypress 
swamps like a pair of snakes crawling along on 
stilts. Trains were few and not at all keen, so 
I ran little danger from that source. The heat 
of noon late in spring blazing down upon the 
track enticed the alligator from his winter hole, 
and he sometimes disputed the right of way on 
the solid levels. Many a time was I moved 
to kick a $30 traveling hag out of one of those 
sodden beasts, but what’s the use? I argued. 
With nothing to put in it, the hag would merely 
retard my progress. Sherman’s march to the 
sea was hut a matinee stroll down Broadway 
in plug hat, cane and spats. 


99 


The Bread Wagon 

The first night out I slumbered fitfully in 
an abandoned handcar house that stood on piles 
beside the track. Before evacuating the prem- 
ises Mr. Morgan removed the floor and three 
sides. Along the remaining wall he left a board 
seat about one foot in width, on which the Dago 
section hands were wont to rest when weary with 
earning their little old 90 cents per day. On 
this board I slept, while the Southern star shone 
in where the roof used to be. Mr. Morgan took 
that, too. I never learned the depth of water 
beneath the house, and it wasn’t my fault. All 
night long I dreamed of sleeping on a clothes- 
line stretched across the gorge below Niagara 
Falls, and was afraid to turn over. 

Thirty miles a day is pretty rapid transit for 
a gfat-headed lobster geared up to jaded limbs 
arid blistered feet, and I had no pacemaker. 
The track was not ballasted, which fact led me 
to overlook much of the scenery. At the same 
time, I seldom missed a tie. The water through 
which Mr. Morgan’s railroad flowed, I have 
since learned, was the color of absinthe, and I 
suffered mightily from thirst. Nor was the gin- 
gerbread diet any too juicy. At the rate I trav- 
eled it was comparatively easy to drop off at 
stations for the purchase of supplies without 
fear of getting left. 



100 


/ 


Dreamed of Sleeping on a Clothesline Stretched Across the Niagara Gorge. 


101 


The Bread Wagon 

The gingerbread came and likewise went in 
slabs at 5 cents each. In the seafaring vernacu- 
lar of that region, the bread was known as the 
stage plank, owing to its outward similarity to 
the landing stage lowered from the bows of 
steamboats. In size, weight, color and shape the 
stage plank more accurately imitates the bland 
building brick. While making no special effort 
to economize, one brick carried me through an 
entire day. My parched salivary glands, allied 
to the want of water, rendered eating a positive 
pain— a condition quite abnormal in a boy. One 
bite of brick to the mile was the average rate 
of consumption ; and if the Divine scribe who 
wrote about straining at gnats and swallowing 
camels had ever been up against the Louisiana 
stage plank, he would doubtless beg leave to 
amend, adding, “and stage planks” to camels. 

Ever and anon I flagged a sky-blue cistern, 
built of staves on top of the, ground, and lap- 
ped up a gallon or so of rainwater with polly- 
wogs in it. Then, like Mr. Christian of whom 
John Bunyan wrote, I proceeded on my journey, 
vastly swelled and feeling and looking much the 
same as a Philadelphia alderman on a junket- 
ing trip with the Liberty Bell. 

The pious thoughts pervading these para- 
graphs are not inspired by levity, for I hold all 


102 


On and Off 


religions sacred. It is the gingerbread. In the 
country church of long ago an air of extreme 
piety could not down the pungent aroma of 
home-made ginger cookies with which mothers 
quieted peevish children during a record-break- 
ing discourse. So it is but natural the Louisiana 
stage plank directs my mental footsteps into the 
path they trod in youth. Gingerbread never 
fails to make me pensive and good. 

Walking was fairly brisk the second day out, 
though my slats ached from sleeping on the 
hoard in the handcar house. After reeling off 
about twenty-nine miles I slowed down for the 
night at a section station bossed by an elderly 
Italian. His astringent face and battered dia- 
lect gave no token of hospitality, and I almost 
feared to ask for lodging. The boss not only 
said I could stay, but he handed out, via the 
back door, a slab of cheese and the heel of a 
rye loaf upholstered with caraway seeds. More- 
over, the kind Italian tendered me the freedom 
of his sky-blue cistern while I ate his bread and 
cheese. Anything for a change was welcome— 
anything that would agitate, antagonize or even 
enthuse the water-logged gingerbread hoarded up 
in my system. No wonder tramps get bilious ! 

For the night the section boss stowed me in 
a vacant bunk in a sort of barracks where he 


103 


The Bread Wagon 

housed the hired men. The lawful proprietor 
of the bunk had gone off to get drunk and 
make a night of it, but about 12 o’clock, while 
my racked and weary frame was wrapped in 
slumber, the drunkard came back and claimed 
his bunk. 

This incident disappointed me in more ways 
than one. I was a little Blue Ribbon Worker; 
had attended Francis Murphy’s temperance lec- 
tures at Mudville, 111., and signed the total 
abstinence pledge every night for two weeks 
under a different name, just to help the cause 
along. According to tradition, the drunken Dago 
should have slept in the gutter, and there was 
plenty of gutter for him, too, in ditches on 
either side of Mr. Morgan’s railroad. But that 
degenerate boozer raised such a fuss about his 
bunk, making no allusion whatever to gutters, 
that the boss came forth with a lantern to look 
us over. 

He didn’t seem to think so much of me then, 
hut he was too good-hearted to kick me out in- 
to the night, which had turned cold and wet. 
So, grumbling some, he gave me another room 
in the hen house. The hens clucked and blinked 
in the lantern light and coiled their feet a lit- 
tle tighter around the roost, while I huddled down 
in a corner. Still feeling glad for any kind of 


104 


On and Off 


a favor, I folded my hands and started to say 
“Now I lay me.” Then, thinking this might 
encroach too heavily on the good nature and hos- 
pitality of the hens, I burst into a chuckle of 
laughter all by my lonely in the dark. 

That I could laugh at all in those damp and 
dismal surroundings did much to comfort, 
strengthen and sustain me. A saving sense of 
the ridiculous is an important adjunct to the suc- 
cessful hobo. Without it, many of them never 
would take the road. Instead, they would stop 
at home and become deacons and trustees and 
prominent citizens who sit on the platform at 
public functions. 

Early in the morning I took leave of the hens 
and limped away on the last lap of the jour- 
ney to the Gulf. The night in the hen- 
nery had given me bone spavin in several new 
places, and I quite forgot my original aching 
joints and parboiled heels. I made a farewell 
demonstration at the cistern, taking in a sup- 
ply of water while the boss was looking, but this 
time he chopped on the bread and cheese. Still 
I had enough stage plank to carry me through, 
and the prospect of getting somewhere that day 
stirred me with unusual ardor. 

Which was but natural in one well raised. I 
desired to spruce up a bit before flashing into 




105 


The Bread Wagon 

Morgan City. Even the rummiest hobo makes 
an occasional effort to be genteel and the per- 
formance I went through is seldom if ever at- 
tempted by civilized persons.. It requires orig- 
inality, delicacy of touch, keen judgment, and a 
cold, unfeeling heart, all of which I had. 

Cutting a long pole from a thicket, I removed 
my shirt, turned the garment inside out and 
hung it by the sleeves to the rear end of the 
pole, which I carried over my shoulder like a 
musket. Every little while I gave the pole a 
shake sufficient to agitate the shirt. The only 
friends I had picked up under the tarpaulins 
at New Orleans, and which stuck through all 
my hardships, fell off in helpless platoons on 
the barren railroad track, a dozen feet behind, 
as I strode resolutely onward, nor cast one lin- 
gering look. 

In the course of a few miles, or when I could 
read my title clear to the shirt, I put it on again 
and swept into Morgan City, La., with my gills 
clogged with gingerbread. It was a coarse boast 
of the railroad that no hobo ever beat his way 
on that line. Trains were guarded and searched 
at stations, and any passenger without a ticket 
was sent to jail. For that reason I did not at- 
tempt to ride, not caring to annoy the manage- 
ment, and I got there just the same. 


CHAPTER IX. 


He Makes His Debut as a Food Passer on a 
Steamboat and Develops a Taste for Yellow 
Journalism in His Capacity as a Pancake Edi- 
tor. 

■ Come to think of it, Morgan City, La., wasn’t 
so much since I had walked three days on a diet 
of gingerbread and rainwater to get there. As 
related in the last chapter, my watch and trunk 
were in hock at New Orleans, and I had strolled 
away from that town more to elude a menu of 
cast-off bananas than anything else. Also, I de- 
sired a change of scene, clothing, money, work, 
friends and a few other trifles a soft-boiled brat 
deemed useful in his business. 

At Morgan City a line of vessels running to 
Vera Cruz, Mex., and Galveston connected with 
the Morgan Railroad, which I had hoofed a 
distance of ninety miles. There was one steamer 
in harbor, the Whitney, bound for Vera Cruz, 
and she only awaited a flash at me before making 
an auspicious and dignified start. A huge af- 
fair was the Whitney, wide and flat, with a 
walking beam engine— one of those river relics 
that bum, blow up or sink as a side issue to 
106 


107 


The Bread Wagon 

Sunday school excursions. With vague ideas of 
what might be doing, I limped aboard and asked 
the first man for a job. 

This large, hairy person bossed the genteel 
pastime of lowering freight into the forward 
hatch and swearing in a florid style all his own. 
When I spoke about bounding away on the laugh- 
ing billows with him he regarded me hopefully 
and wanted to know if I had a pair of scissors. 
I said I had not. 

“Because if you had you might get a berth 
down below trimming coal, ’ ’ he said. 

“Maybe I can borrow a pair from the other 
fellows,” I ventured, “and if you’ll show me 
how to get down there I’ll try.” 

That subtle seaman pointed out an iron lad- 
der leading into the lurid bowels of the ship, 
and I was making for it when a young man in 
a blue cap, probably a freight clerk, headed me 
off. 

“Don’t try it, sonny,” he cautioned. “That 
place would kill you. Nothing but niggers can 
stand the fire room. See the steward. He might 
fix you.” 

I did see the steward, a fat negro resembling 
Billy Bice in stage make-up, and he fixed me 
plenty. The steamer was due to sail in an hour 
or so with 200 cabin passengers. Seven of the 


108 


On and Off 


ten coon waiters had struck and gone ashore 
because they didn’t esteem the Hon. Billy, pro- 
moted to chief steward from among their ranks 
on the previous trip. Each of the malcontents 
thought he should have won the epaulets. In 
a temptest of rage, grief and mortification the 
blighted seven jumped the ship, and, moreover, 
they boycotted Billy Bice so that all well-dis- 
posed coons affiliated with the Food Passers’ 
Union kept away from the usurper in the hour 
of his greatest need. 

The idea of putting to sea with the three 
black dubs who stuck handling the table service 
for 200 people filled the mind of Billy Rice with 
frightful forebodings. He would look worse than 
the steward on a sampan, and Billy knew it. So 
he fell on my neck as the savior of his reputa- 
tion when I said I could handle more cooked 
grub than any six men, white or black. It was 
necessary to tell Billy something of a cheering 
nature in order to debut as the only white Food 
Passer sailing in those troubled waters. 

Under certain stress a fellow is justified in 
lying, if only for a mere matter of self-preserva- 
tion. It was imperative the Whitney should go 
to sea. I had to go somewhere, and, as we 
needed one another in our business, what was 
more natural than that the Whitney and I should 


109 


The Bread Wagon 

form a diplomatic alliance? And yet I was a 
hollow mockery; or, to put it even stronger, an 
empty fraud about to bunco a confiding steam- 
boat. 

In a hazy sort of way I understood the duty 
required of me was to dally with real victuals, 
and I was willing to learn all over again. Mr. 
Rice was too absorbed in his own troubles to 
take much notice of my general fuzzy, sleeping- 
out, rained-on, flea-bitten, half-starved aspect un- 
til the steamer was well down the bay. Billy 
then gave me a lovely white jacket that but- 
toned up to my chin. After scouring my face 
and brushing my hair my upper works took 
on a beauteous form, quite pleasing to behold, 
until I looked at my feet, which were all to 
the peacock. My fine feathers drooped and I 
felt like a bird of low degree among the ladies 
and gentlemen in gay traveling plumage. How- 
ever, my mind was not permitted to dwell on 
the outer man. 

It was mid-afternoon when the Whitney 
cleared and the scant cabin force tackled the 
prodigious task of laying the tables and serving 
supper. Billy Rice, his three black food passers 
and myself toted great loads of dishes from the 
pantry to the long saloon. This work kept us 
on the broad jump, but I found time for keen 



110 


Ill 


The Bread Wagon 

side diversions at once profitable and soothing. 
Connected with the pantry was the officer’s mess 
room, in which supper was already laid for the 
dog watch. A narrow table placed against the 
wall was stacked with cold meats, fowl, sardines, 
salads and pastry sufficient for five men. In 
one hour, passing in and out, I cleared that 
table while helping to set the cabin board. I 
won something each trip, and sometimes a double 
portion, devouring pie and smoked salmon with 
equal eclat while on the double quick. 

My fellow food passers regarded me with 
superstitious awe common to the negro. Billy 
Rice, though he said little, seemed depressed 
by the knowledge he had signed and shipped 
for that voyage a living, breathing famine. My 
skinny legs were hollow, and I couldn’t stop 
eating until the bones ceased to rattle. Two 
weeks on a desultory diet of bananas, three days 
in the dry gingerbread class, and one night and 
the greater part of the next day at Morgan City 
without food had geared me up to the mean 
voracity of a threshing machine. Billy Rice at 
length viewed my case in a proper light. 
“White boy,” he -said, “you shore am hungry.” 

I confessed to a faint gnawing in my vitals. 

“But if you can feed other white folks like 
you do yourself,” the Chief Steward continued, 
“the ship is saved.” 


112 


On and Off 


Blushing with pride, I said my aim was to 
give the passengers a run for their passage 
money after getting myself filled up. So when 
I slowed down we spread another layout for the 
dog watch, and pretty soon a grand free-for-all 
foray opened in the main saloon. 

Waiting on table is easy enough when you 
know how. Slender maidens with their thumbs 
immersed in hot soup have been seen to glide 
serenely and never spill a drop, but that was 
done on an even keel. Aboard a rolling ship 
it is different. There the food passer requires 
a steady brain and eye, sea legs and the trick 
of juggling perfected to the highest possible 
art. All these qualities I lacked, and it wasn’t 
long before the passengers and even B. Bice dis- 
covered me to be a four-flusher of the first 
water. The cabin resounded with the wails of 
the maimed and hungry. 

I made a hideous mess of things on my 
station— anointed myself, the cabin and its con- 
tents with soup and gravy; took an order from 
one person and served it to another— ever and 
anon chipping chunks off the gilded wainscot- 
ing with my moist and burning brow. Because 
of my color, perhaps, and the manner in which 
I strove to please the more fastidious, our pas- 
sengers vielded to the not unnatural belief that 


113 


The Bread Wagon 

j. owned the ship. One red-headed pilgrim to 
Vera Cruz addressed me politely as Mr. Whit- 
ney, to the annoyance of my black contempor- 
aries, and as Mr. Whitney I was known through- 
out the voyage. 

Somehow we struggled along and fought that 
first meal to a bitter finish. I was covered with 
shame and prune juice and other things, and the 
grand saloon resembled the lunch hour on a 
chowder steamer. During a lull in the havoc, 
when passengers and food passers paused for 
breath, the ship gave a lurch. She sidestepped 
on me. I was standing at attention at one side 
of the saloon. My heels struck the sill or 
coaming of an open state room door, and in 
I fell on the flat of my back. The jar rocked 
the ship and shook a shower of glass pendants 
from the grand chandelier above the table. 

That stunt was the best thing I ever did on 
any vessel, for the introduction of vaudeville at 
a critical stage in the tragedy dispelled the dark 
looks and muttered threats which portended open 
mutiny. The scalded, gummed and streaky pas- 
sengers broke into cheers and merry shouts of 
laughter. They thought I was killed. Even 
when the white ghost of Mr. Whitney crawled 
out of the stateroom to haunt them some more 
the general good feeling was such that no one 


114 


The Bread Wagon 

thought of reporting to me any incivility or in- 
attention on the part of the waiters, and there- 
by conferring a favor on the management. 

Over night our noble ship wheezed her way 
into the fussy waters of the Gulf, and in con- 
sequence the eating force was vastly diminished. 
The ill ones seemed glad because we didn’t have 
enough waiters to go round. Less than half 
the cabin complement appeared at breakfast, and 
while that meal was on Billy Bice made a dis- 
covery which tickled me as well as himself. 
Wheat cakes are one of the few edibles that will 
not slop over or spill at sea, and, as our cook 
made them, the cakes clung to the plates like 
patent medicine stickers. My career at once took 
shape. 

I could serve the wheats without attracting 
undue notice, so they promoted me to Pancake 
Editor, in which capacity I issued three editions 
daily, with an occasional Fried Egg extra. Thus, 
in a way, I got a taste of yellow journalism long 
before my time in Park Bow. In a short time 
I grew quite pert and could gallop into the grand 
saloon— the hollow of my left arm piled high 
with little plates, which I shot around the tables 
after the manner of the fellow dealing poker 
to experts who desire one card on the draw. 

Furthermore, in recognition of my one deep 




The Hollow of My Arm Piled High with Plates. 


115 


116 


On and Off 


sea talent, B. Bice published pancakes for every 
meal just to help me along, and I’ll never for- 
get him for that. 

No matter how poor, humble and worthless 
he may be, a boy will do one thing properly, 
and if encouraged in that one thing his confi- 
dence is established and he eventually aspires 
to something ennobling and uplifting. Less than 
two weeks later I earned 40 cents shoveling 
oyster shells at Galveston, Texas; but, as Bud- 
yard once said, that’s another item. Just the 
same, I look back with pride to my career as 
Pancake Editor. 

All days look alike in the busy routine on 
board a crowded vessel, and I readily fell into 
the way of going ship-shape. Food, sleep and 
excitement soon rounded out the hollows in 
my boyish cheeks, and Mr. Whitney, with the 
cares of a large steamboat on his mind, fared 
well. 

One of the black boys gave me a shirt and 
collar; another trimmed my hair and a passen- 
ger, whose heart was large and his feet medium, 
tipped me to a pair of shoes. The condition 
of my old ones was wretched in the extreme. 
Bun over at the heel and turned up at the side, 
they gave my feet the appearance of being set 


117 


The Bread Wagon 

in italics. These italicized feet always empha/- 
size a hard luck story. 

While the ship lay at Vera Cruz they kept 
me on board to scrub things. On the way back 
she stopped at Galveston. There I spurned B. 
Rice, tendered my resignation as Pancake Editor 
and went ashore to swing Texas around by the 
tail. 


CHAPTER X. 


Tells How He Started in to Swing Texas Around 
by the Tail, and How Some Boyish Dreams 
Were Dispelled. 

For a long while Texas had looked good to 
me as a place where a boy of moderate industry 
could pick up a decent income detecting train 
robbers, bringing them to justice and collecting 
the reward. At least, that scheme was a snap 
in the Youth’s Detective Series; but once within 
the Lone Star regions things were different. The 
only robber I bumped into eluded my vigilance. 
He found me a tapioca with seedless raisins in it. 

One bleary afternoon in March I landed at 
Galveston, the sole proprietor and manager of 
$6, earned as a steamship food passer on a trip 
across the Gulf. It was my first experience in 
the food flinging line, and, while the passengers 
did not get all that was coming to them, I had 
fared pretty well. The steamer picked me up, 
a footsore and hungry tramp, at a jay seaport 
in Louisiana, for the round voyage to Vera Cruz. 
By the time we reached Galveston, homeward 
bound, I was fed and rested and chesty. The 
negro steward who tutored me in food passing 
118 


G> 



I Landed in Galveston the Sole Proprietor 
and Manager of $6. 


119 


120 


On and Off 


as an art wanted me to linger and be of use 
to him, but I spurned the proposition, demanded 
my pay and went ashore. He had a lot to say 
about ungrateful white bums. 

While I didn’t look much like a sailor, I felt 
and acted the part. The odor of dish water and 
prunes, instead of tar, pervaded my youthful 
being, yet I walked with a nautical roll, ever 
and anon giving my greasy trousers a hitch, and 
squinting up at the sky. For an hour or two 
I looked about the wharves talking of my travels 
with oyster openers, crab fishers and unemployed 
crap shooters, who are to be found in large herds 
at Southern seaports. That evening I dined on 
raw oysters at an open-faced cafe built against 
a wharf shed, and told the proprietor many in- 
teresting things about Vera Cruz. My ship an- 
chored three miles from shore during our stay 
at the Mexican port. I remained on board the 
entire time, and a dense fog prevailed night and 
dav. Still, as the restaurant man had never been 
to Vera Cruz, I was able to tell him all he 
wanted to know about the place. 

Being a thorough seagoing person, as I 
thought, the only place for me was on the water 
front, so I hove to for the night, at the Mariners’ 
Retreat. This snug haven for sea rovers was a 
one-story shack squeezed in between a green hide 


The Bread Wagon 


121 


store and a saloon that had a heavy list to star- 
board. Even on the outside the building wore 
an air of happy, careless intoxication. My new 
friend, the oyster man, steered me to the Mar- 
iners’ Retreat, which displayed a signboard ex- 
ecuted in oil by a barn painter, who had the 
true conception of sailors. The one he depicted 
wore wide, flat trousers, a flat hat, with ribbons 
dangling from the brim, and his shirt was open 
almost to the waistline. This decollete effect 
was necessary to display the topmasts of a ship 
supposed to be tattooed on the bosoxn of the 
mariner. In feature the man on the signboard 
resembled Tom Sharkey, only his expression was 
more spirited and lifelike than Tom’s. 

The interior arrangement of the retreat com- 
prised four rooms; two on either side of a hall, 
with kitchen and dining room at the back. Each 
room contained two double beds. The front door 
opened on the street, and just , inside the portal 
sat a withered little old man, with the lower 
part of his body embalmed in a horse blanket.. 
On his head he wore a seaman’s wool cap, and! 
under his chin a narrow fringe of pale sandy 
whiskers of the kind known as Scotch shrubbery.. 

“Did you want to say good-night to grandpa?”’ 
he squeaked in a ratlike voice. 



122 


Detecting Train Robbers and Collecting the Reward. 


123 


The Bread Wagon 

“Who is grandpa?” I asked, wondering if lie 
were a mislaid relative of mine. 

“Me,” said the little old man. “Guests must 
say good-night to grandpa before turning in. 
It’s a rule of the house. Twenty-five cents. Have 
you got the money?” 

“Oh!” I said, “ ‘good-night’ means to pay in 
advance. Sure. I’ve got the price.” 

He looked at me sideways while I exhumed 
a loose quarter from my raiment and placed 
it on the table. Kicking his thin legs out of 
the horse blanket grandpa picked up the coin 
and the lamp and started to lead me along the 
hall, when he paused as if held up by a sudden 
thought. 

“Have you any change?” Grandpa asked cour- 
teously. “So many guests spring large bills on 
me and I can not go out for change.” 

I told him I had $6 in silver— my pay-day on 
the steamer. 

“How fortunate,” chuckled the old gentleman. 
“You can break this $5, if you’ll be so kind.” 

Five of my silver dollars were exchanged for 
the bill, and Grandpa showed me to my cozy 
apartment in one of the rear rooms. There was 
just space between the beds for a fellow to 
stand and peel. Chairs were deemed a needless 
luxury in the Retreat. 


124 


On and Off 


“Now, sonny,” said Grandpa, holding the light 
in the doorway while I disrobed, “you can sleep 
on the front side of this bed. Like as not, 
there’ll he no more guests. And for 25 cents you 
may have a nice breakfast in the morning.” 

With that the kind old man backed away and 
once more settled down in his horse blanket at 
the front door. By the light of a hall lamp 
thrown over the low partition I crawled into 
bed, first placing my purse in my vest and 
hiding it beneath the sheet under my shoulders. 
It was daylight when I awoke, feeling much 
refreshed. The other bed was empty, but showed 
symptoms of having been occupied. Hearing 
a noise at my back, I turned over and found a 
dark-browed, stocky man, fully dressed even to 
his shoes, lying on the bed between me and the 
wall. On seeing me awake the stranger bade 
me a cheerful good-morning, crawled out and sat 
on the side of the bed. 

“Will you be so good, young fellow, as to lace 
and tie my shoe?” he added. “I’ve got a lame 
hip on one side and can’t bend low enough.” 

“Certainly, sir,” I replied, willing to oblige 
the afflicted. “It’s a terrible thing to be lame, 
sir.” 

Hopping out I knelt down to lace the shoe. 
While at work on that labor of love I was pained 


125 


The Bread Wagon 

and shocked to detect my faithful vest lying on 
the floor under the bed. With a horrible fear 
at my heart I hauled out the vest and found the 
purse, empty and turned inside out, stuffed back 
into the pocket in which I left it. 

“Look at that!” I gasped. “I’ve been robbed 
in the night!” 

“Well, I declare, if that isn’t so!” exclaimed 
my bed partner, equally astonished. “This is a 
wicked town, and no mistake. Must have been 
the fellows in the other bed. They went out 
early. I’m glad you don’t suspect me.” 

Thanking me for my kindness the alleged lame 
man limped out of the room, leaving me to wres- 
tle with some afterthoughts. What puzzled me 
was how the vest got from under my body and 
took a header to the floor without disturbing my 
repose. That I had been touched was plenty 
plain and clear, but when and by whom was the 
mystery. My pillow was in place, but the lower 
sheet was gone from my side of the bed and lay 
in a sort of windrow down the center of the 
couch. That explained it. The man who slept 
at the back had rolled me for my roll. By pull- 
ing the sheet away inch by inch he caused me 
to turn the other way in my innocent slumber 
until the treasure vest was within his covetous 
grasp. I awoke before he could, get away with 


126 


On and Off 


the swag and the shoe game was but a cunning 
subterfuge. He wanted me to discover the looted 
vest under the bed before he departed and thus 
divert suspicion from himself. Neat work. 

My wardrobe was intact for the reason it was 
not worth stealing, and I had no baggage. After 
dressing I went into the hall to confide in grand- 
pa, but he was off watch. In the kitchen I found 
a good looking but dissipated young man cooking 
things, the odor of which was maddening to a 
hungry and bankrupt boy. 

“Who runs this outfit?” I demanded. 

‘ ‘ Wliat has that to do with you?” retorted the 
chef. 

“Lots,” I said. “They robbed me in there 
last night— took every cent I had and pushed 
the bottom of the purse up into the place where 
the money used to be. There it is. Look at it.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for your tough luck,” said 
the cook in a soft and, it seemed, complacent 
voice. “I own this place, but sleep elsewhere. 
The old man you saw last night is the watchman. 
Did you request him to put your valuables in 
the safe?” 

“No, sir; I didn’t know you had a safe.” 

“Then I’m afraid we can not help you any,” 
he replied somewhat sadly and ignoring the safe 


127 


The Bread Wagon 

query. “You were very careless, but you 
needn’t pay for your lodging.” 

“To-night?” I asked, eagerly. 

“No, last night.” 

“Why, I paid for that in advance— said good- 
night to grandpa,” I added, with a ghastly at- 
tempt at humor. 

The cook laughed, turned his fat back on me 
and prodded the good things on the stove. He 
was guying me, and, rather than stand for that 
sort of thing, I went out and walked around the 
block. In one respect I was a full-fledged mar- 
iner. The sharks cleaned me out the first night 
ashore, and once more I was up against the star- 
vation gag. Gradually the system by which I 
was touched unfolded itself. Nothing could have 
been easier or neater than the syndicate hotel 
game worked in the Mariner’s Retreat. 

To begin with, the pirate in the open-faced 
oyster joint on the water front was the outside 
man. He did the steering. The cook was the 
silent partner— paid the rent and served the 
meals to people who did not sleep in the house. 
Dear old grandpa, with his cheerful little good- 
night joke, was a sort of investigation committee. 
His business was to probe the financial standing 
of a mariner. Changing the $5 bill was but a subtle 
stratagem to get at the size of my pile. And 


128 


On and Off 


the quick-witted gentleman with the lame hip was 
the night operator — the man with the gentle touch 
— and he was a peach. My poor little roll didn’t 
amount to much, yet the loss of it let me into 
the details of a syndicate system which doubtless 
paid rich dividends when real sailors, with deep 
water paydays, stumbled into the trap. 

At that the Mariners’ Eetreat did not -differ 
from hotels I have since known in New York 
and at swagger summer resorts. The landlord 
and his assistants get all your money, but the 
operation is not so sudden as that practiced 
on the simple mariner in Texas. And the legit- 
imate hotel man makes a feeble bluff at giving 
Ms victims something in return for his genteel 
mode of piracy. 

About the middle of the forenoon, tired, dis- 
heartened and hungry, I sneaked past the Re- 
treat. My late bed-fellow, now half drunk, stood 
in a cocky attitude in front of the place. One 
hand rested on an awning post and the other 
on his lame hip. A row of brown cigars pro- 
truded from his vest pocket, and his hat was 
canted over one eye. 

“Hello, bub!” the Boss Dipper said in a dis- 
gustingly familiar way. “How much did you 
lose last night?” just as if he didn’t know. 


129 


The Bread Wagon 

“It was my all, sir— all I had in the world — 
six dollars.” 

“Don’t let that worry you,” he said in father- 
ly accents. “All you can buy with money is 
whisky and tobacco, and such things won’t do 
you any good. Cheer up.” 

And thus I left him in the enjoyment of his 
ill-gotten wealth. 

On first leaving home I was desirous of pro- 
curing employment, so my letter of introduction 
stated. Now I wanted a job. A swift canvass 
of the town disclosed but one iron foundry in 
an active state of eruption. This was an ama- 
teur industrial outfit in Class B, resembling a 
box car with a funnel sticking up at one side. 
All the same, it starred the name of Vulcan Iron 
Works on a board longer than the building. 
There was but one person Vulcaning in the place 
—a meek-looking man in spectacles, who had the 
air of a blighted being. He was molding grate 
bars for the sawmill district, and from the pat- 
tern layout I judged that was the chief product. 

“Is the foreman about?” I inquired of the 
Blighted Being. 

“I’m him,” he replied, actually blushing. 
“What can I do for you?” 

My needs were soon explained. I told him my 
hard luck story from top to bottom: How my 


130 


On and Off 

watch and trunk were in hock at New Orleans; 
my tramp to the Gulf; the sea voyage, and the 
lifting of my $6 in that pirate’s nest — the Mar- 
iners’ Retreat. Also, I mentioned Mudville, 111., 
and the names of the men I had worked with 
there. He knew one of them, and his heart 
warmed to me. The sad foreman bustled about, 
fed me from his dinner pail and talked a blue 
streak. To one of my youth and inexperience he 
could unbosom himself and escape ridicule. 

“While I’m foreman here,” he confessed, with 
another blush, “they won’t allow me to hire any 
one. I do all the work myself.” • 

“And boss yourself, too?” I inquired, in a 
burst of astonishment. 

“In a manner of speaking, I have my own way 
pretty much,” he confided. “I do all the work, 
load the melting furnace, melt the iron and on 
casting days the owner hires a couple of niggers 
to help me with the ladles. For years I wanted 
to be a foreman, and this is it,” he half sobbed, 
“making these bloody grate bars. Enough to 
drive a good man daffy. But, say, I can get you 
a job on the outside if you’ll take it.” 

Of course I would, in a minute, so the unhappy 
boss of himself wrote me a note to die superin- 
tendent of the street car system. 


131 


The Bread Wagon 

“That man Walsh is a friend of mine. I once 
saved his life and he’ll do anything for me.” 

Mr. Walsh read the note and with bad grace, 
I thought, set me at work with a bunch of Dagoes 
shifting a section of car track. The road was 
ballasted with oyster shells, which had to be 
chopped loose with pickaxes. At the end of two 
hours of brilliant achievement we came to a 
switch, and while a couple of Dagoes worked 
with crowbars for a pinch lift on the switch 
frog I straightened up and rested my hands on 
my hips. My spine, too, needed a change of 
scene. That move was the cue for Mr. Walsh, 
who popped out from somewhere. 

“Say, young fellow,” he growled, “we haven’t 
work enough, it seems, to keep you busy. Como 
to the office and get your pay.” 

I protested I was only waiting for the bar 
men to lift the edge of the frog, so I could get 
my hands under and help raise it, hut the highly 
indignant Mr. Walsh fired me just the same. He 
could not well ignore the request from the man 
who saved his life, hut there was nothing in the 
bond to prevent Mr. Walsh giving me the grand 
bounce on short notice, and I got it. He paid me 
off with thirty cents’ worth of street car tickets 
—two hours’ work at the rate of fifteen cents 
per. That helped some, as there was no “Seeing 


132 


The Bread Wagon 

Galveston” car in those days, and I couldn’t 
squander my salary touring the city. 

Had the peculiar significance of thirty cents 
been established at that time I would perhaps 
have told Mr. Walsh his life was worth just what 
it cost him to discharge the obligation he owed 
the foundry foreman. But, alas! I was shy on 
repartee, the same as other necessaries of life, so 
I hit the trucks of a passenger train to Houston. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Finding Himself Canned in a Texas Swamp , the 

Hobo Digs His Way Out icith a Shovel. 

Thirty cents in Galveston street car tickets is 
not a fervent working capital with which to begin 
life anew at Houston or any other given point 
in Texas. Lady authors of “How to Live on 
Ninety- two Cents Per Week” might deem that 
sum colossal, but don’t you believe them. I 
tried it once, and would not make a similar at- 
tempt, now that my habits of living have changed, 
with less than forty cents. 

The tickets came to me as recompense for two 
hours’ work with a shovel on the car tracks at 
Galveston, after which at the request of the boss, 
I took a transfer on the trucks to Houston. At 
that time an era of reciprocity raged between 
those two cities. The green ticket of Galveston 
was good for bread, beer and rides at Houston, 
and the blue slips of the latter place were like- 
wise honored at the seaport. Thus I was fairly 
well heeled while the six tickets lasted. 

Owing to the skinny state of my finances I 
went back to the stage-plank diet— slabs of dry 
gingerbread at one ticket each. There always 

133 



I Found Cozy Sleeping Quarters in a Dry Culvert 


134 


135 


The Bread Wagon 

is an abundance of water at Houston, more than 
was needed to wash down the bread, but I man- 
aged to find cozy sleeping quarters in a dry 
culvert on one of the graded streets. The name 
of the street has slipped my memory, yet most 
any boy placed as I was can easily locate the 
culvert if he needs it, and he doubtless will. 

Tlie only iron foundry at Houston had closed 
down for want of work, and I was about to do 
the same at the end of two days. But one ticket 
remained in my touring fund, and I squandered 
that for more bread. On the morning of the 
third day I moped around the streets like a hen 
with the pip. It was raining plenty and I lurked 
in the shelter of a sidewalk awning, thinking 
pensively of the flood that by nightfall would 
be racing through my late dry culvert. The 
spark of hope flickered but faintly in my damp 
bosom, when my eye caught a placard: “Men 
Wanted for the Country: Apply Upstairs.” I 
applied swiftly at a glass door bearing this 
legend in ornate gold letters: “Mr. Paul Beau- 
mond’s Eastern and Western Texas Narrow 
Gauge Railroad Company, Limited.” The name 
was almost as wide and nearly as long as the 
railroad, but I didn’t know this at the time. 

The only person visible in the office was an oily 
looking elderly creature— one of those vain men, 


136 


On and Off 


who suspects that his hair is cuny, and does 
things to strengthen the suspicion. This man’s 
hair was iron gray — streaks of black and white 
smeared with grease and tousled into the sem- 
blance of short curls. The whole effect sug- 
gested a mess of fried onions, and made me so 
hungry I almost forgot what I came for. 

“What is it, boy?” the oily man harshly in- 
quired. 

“I’m looking for work, sir,” I replied, gazing 
fascinated at his fried onions. 

He must have taken my glance for one of pro- 
found admiration. His manner softened, and, 
after sizing me up, he said I didn’t look much 
like a working man. That wasn’t my fault, I 
said, and then told him all my troubles. 

“Poor boy!” he said, in such a sad way I 
could have wept over my own misfortunes. 
“Really, you are not able to work after those 
hardships. Your system is all run down. What 
you need is some light occupation— a mild diver- 
sion, as it were, to take your mind off your- 
self and tone you up. We have the very place 
for you.” 

“Where is it?” I asked, ready to shed tears 
of joy and gratitude. 

“At our railroad camp in Polk county, sev- 
enty-five miles from here. Splendid scenery, nice 


137 


The Bread Wagon 

surroundings, pure air and fine board. We will 
pass you out on the railroad, pay you $1.50 per 
day and deduct 50 cents for board. The train 
starts in an hour. Are you ready to go?” 

Was I ready? Well, I guess yes. When he wrote 
out 'the pass I galloped all the way to the station. 
I traveled in my baggage and made good time. 
A little jerk- water narrow-gauge engine and one 
coach comprised the train, and I took a front 
seat in the car. The trip to Livingston consumed 
most of the day owing to numerous stops at new 
settlements of small and mangy aspect. When 
the conductor punched my ticket he wanted to 
know why I went fo Livingston. 

“To work on the railroad,” I said proudly. 

“You’ll stay just long enough to get back,” 
he retorted, with a brutal laugh. 

I didn’t understand him then, but later on his 
meaning struck me in a lump, and the blow was 
a corker. 

Shortly before dusk we reached Livingston, 
Polk county, Tex., and halted for the night, as 
the track ended there. That was the jumping- 
off place. So far as I could see the bustling city 
of Livingston comprised much swamp, three box- 
cars standing on a siding and some tiny log huts 
in the bushes. In a few places clear of water a 
fellow could get all the mud he wanted and then 


138 


The Bread Wagon 

some. I was the only passenger who played 
the train to the limit, and when I alighted a large 
man in a red flannel shirt seemed by instinct to 
know just what to do with me. 

“See that cabin?” he said, pointing to a hut 
at the edge of the clearing. “That’s where you 
sleep. Now go to the cars and get your supper. 
I’ll need you in the morning.” 

Two of the box cars formed the dining hall, 
fitted with rough board tables and benches spiked 
to the floor. In the third car, which was coupled 
to the others, a dope-dazed Chinaman dreamed 
he was the cook. Supper being over, the China- 
man brought me a tin platter of cold salt pork 
and cornbread. I ate the whole business, and 
would have asked for more only I didn’t know 
the cook very well. After cleaning out the ban- 
quet- hall, I groped among stumps and puddles 
to the cluster of log huts. Camp fires burned 
in front of the doors, lighting up groups of 
muddy, shaggy men, who looked like pirates 
smoking and swearing in the weird glare. 

In the doorway of the hut assigned to me, and 
which stood apart from the others, sat a man 
of giant skeleton frame, with his face buried in 
his bony hands. He appeared to be thinking. 
His huge feet were sprawled out toward a pile 
of blazing sticks. On hearing me approach he 


The Prize Beauty 









§£S38§»<4 KiJl 







139 




peered up through his fingers, still keeping his 
features concealed. 

“Who sent you here, huh?” he growled. 

“The big man in the red shirt,” I said, apol- 
ogetically. 

“That’s the boss. Did he say anything about 
the Prize Beauty?” 

“He did not,” I replied, beginning to feel 
scared. “Who might he be?” 

‘ ‘ Me ! ’ ’ said the skeleton, with a horrible laugh. 
“I’m a free show in these parts. Look!” 

Removing his hands, he exposed his face to 
the firelight. Under each eye was a wide, cres- 
cent-shaped scar fully two inches long, with the 
points turned upwards. Another scar, clean cut 
and regular, passed along below his chin and 
extended from ear to ear. In the middle this 
gash was at least three inches wide, and, like 
the others, was of a dull red, in a setting of 
sickly white. My hut-mate certainly was a Prize 
Beauty. 

“That is what they call me here,” he said, as 
if reading my thoughts, “and I’ll tell you all 
about it. The other fellows know, and I’ll give 
it to you straight, only don’t laugh. Sit there 
on that stump and listen. Now then, first off, 
have you ever been in love?” 

Feeling it safer to tell the truth, I said that 


141 


The Bread Wagon 

Mr. Cupid’s dart had not yet pierced my tender 
vitals. 

“Don’t ever be in love, my boy,” he went on 
mournfully. “There’s nothing in that game. I 
was in love once, and all I got out of it was a 
face like comets shooting across the milky way. 
The lady lived in Indiana, and at the time we 
met I weighed 350 pounds. Looked like a prize 
Berkshire hog at the county fair. She said she 
couldn’t marry a fat man, so I went in for Anti- 
Fat. I owned a drug store and kept the stuff 
in stock. Well, the medicine pulled me down 
as thin as I am now and left me a holy show. 
Two pouches of loose skin hung beneath my eyes, 
like buckskin purses, and the flap of waste hide 
under my chin would half sole a pair of boots. 
The lady never would have me in that shape, 
so I went to Indianapolis and hired a Beauty 
Doctor to skin me.” 

“Did he do you up like that?” I inquired in 
shocked accent. 

“Not quite. The job was all right at first. 
The scars on my eyes scarcely showed, and my 
neck bore a thin red mark. Looked like I had 
worn a hat with a rubber band under the chin, 
kid fashion. The lady warmed up right away, 
and the love business was booming until I started 
to get fat. That put an end to love’s young 


142 On and Off 

dream and drove me forever from the haunts of 
females. ’ ’ 

Here the Prize Beauty bent his head in silent 
anguish, while I sat and shivered and waited 
for the end. 

“The flesh kept piling up on me in spite of 
Anti-Fat, or anything else. That drug had lost 
its grip, and I soon went up to 300 pounds. The 
loose skin the Beauty Doctor cut away left my 
face cramped for room. I couldn’t shut my eyes, 
and the wide hem taken up under the chin drew 
my head forward, till I could see nothing hut 
the ground with eyes that never closed. On top 
of this awful affliction the lady I loved sent word 
that she heard I had lost a nickel in boyhood 
and was out looking for it. At least she sus- 
pected me, because I walked with my head down 
and eyes wide open. 

‘ ‘ Her cruel sneer stung me, mostly in the places 
where I had no skin. I sent a farewell note to 
the fickle maiden, sold the drug store and flew the 
coop. Worry and despair pulled the fat off me 
again, but the strain on the cuts was so great 
they stretched and never closed up. I’ll never 
be any better, ’ ’ he added sadly. ‘ ‘ This is a good 
place for me, and here I stay. Time now to go 
to bed. Climb in.” 

Vastly moved by this story of beauty and 


143 


The Bread Wagon 

spurned affection, I wriggled into a bunk that 
contained the same kind of bedding they give a 
horse. Lodgers in railroad camps furnish their 
own bedding, and I had forgotten mine. The 
night turned cold, and I would have suffered 
much but for the heat generated in my system 
thinking of the oily-haired villain at Houston 
who had steered me into that den of luxury and 
mild diversion. At daylight all hands were rout- 
ed out to a breakfast of fat pork, dried apples 
and coffee. The Chinaman was at his worst in 
the coffee line. After breakfast I was handed a 
shovel and loaded with the gang on to a string of 
flat cars pushed by a dinky engine. In a narrow 
cut of yellow clay, which the rain had washed 
upon the track, the workers were dumped off into 
the ditches on either side of the road and or- 
dered to shovel mud. The water covering the 
mud had frozen a thin sheet of ice over night, 
and when I jumped I bogged down to my knees 
in the chill mass. I looked at the other fellows. 
Light occupation seemed to be their regular busi- 
ness, so I bored in and dug with the best of them. 

The tops of the flat cars on which we piled the 
yellow muck stood level with our faces. In 
order to discharge a shovel load it was necessary 
to bang the shovel edge on the car. The effect 
was like dropping a decayed pumpkin off a tall 


144 


On and Off 


building. Gobs of smeary yellow goo squirted in 
all directions. It lodged in my eyes, ears and 
hair and plastered my clothes from top to bot- 
tom. After loading the cars the engine towed 
them to another place, where we pushed the mud 
overboard and went back for more. When the 
noon hour came I resembled the statue of some 
great General in the modeling stage. All I 
needed was a sword in place of the shovel. The 
only spot clear of mud was my mouth, and I 
filled that with fried pork. 

Work in the afternoon was much the same, 
except the late March air was not so keen. The 
supply of mud held out. In fact, it oozed into 
the cut as fast as we hauled it away, and I beheld 
enough gentle diversion amid pleasant surround- 
ings to be the death of me. The Prize Beauty 
was not at work that day. I found him in the 
cabin door after supper feeling of his scalped 
face and looking at the fire. He asked me how 
I liked the place. I said I’d go back to Houston 
on the train in the morning. 

“Not this time, bub,” he said, kindly. “It’s 
seventy-five miles to Houston, and the rate is 
ten cents a mile. They pass a fellow out here 
and he must pay his way back. That takes $7.50. 
The least you can do it in is eleven days, in- 
cluding two Sundays, for which board is charged. 


145 


The Bread Wagon 

Nine days’ work, if it doesn’t rain, bring you 
$13.50, and eleven days’ board, at 50 cents per, 
comes to $5.50. Deducting $7.50 for railroad 
fare, you may, if you live, return to Houston in 
about two weeks with a net profit of 50 cents.” 

Hie facility with which the Prize Beauty did 
mental arithmetic in and around my affairs made 
me ill. But he was right. They had me canned 
in the swamp, and the only way out was to dig 
it with a shovel. I went to bed in my muddy 
clothes a blighted, blasted, ruined mechanic. Any- 
how, I could eat while working out my sentence, 
and that was a better prospect than walking back 
to Houston. 

Comforted by this view of the case, I fell 
asleep, and remained that way all night. In the 
morning I was unable to move, and thought I had 
become paralyzed from overwork, anxiety and 
worry. But it was merely the clothes. The heat 
of my body caked the mud with which the gar- 
ments were smeared, and I was in a plaster cast. 
This pleasing discovery cheered me much, and 
as the day was Sunday, and bright and warm, I 
spent most of the time beating the mud armor 
off myself with a club. The Prize Beauty showed 
me how, as he was on to all the niceties of camp 
life. He had spent years at the business, and 
said he would end his unhappy days in gummy 


146 


The Bread Wagon 

seclusion. This victim of unrequited love worked 
one week and loafed two on the proceeds. That 
was his system. 

A rugged constitution and an appetite of the 
same enabled me to survive my career in Mr. 
P. Beaumond’s swamp. At the end of two weeks 
I headed for Houston to invest my 50 cents net 
profit. 


CHAPTER XII. 


The Friendship of a Horse is a Good Thing r 

hut the Human Breastworks Business Is Not. 

When all else fails and the whole world seems 
turned against a fellow in distress, the horse will 
sometimes take him in and treat him kindly. 
There is a bond of sympathy between the horse 
and jackass, which may account for the ease 
with which I found haven in a Houston livery' 
stable. I shared a sunny front box stall with a 
large red stallion, with a low board partition be- 
tween us. The steed slept on his feet, while I 
reposed in an exploded bale of hay during the 
brief spells allowed for slumber. A livery stable 
career is a hectic one at best. The hours of work 
and rest mingle in a manner to make the ama- 
teur hostler daffy. 

The red stallion and I got chummy some time 
after my escape from a railroad camp in the 
wilds of Texas. Buncoed into the swamp in the 
first place by means of a pass, I shoveled soft 
mud two weeks in order to earn my fare hack to 
Houston. Thus I returned to civilization with a 
net profit of fifty cents, and an accumulation of 
caked mud on my person which no wasp could 
147 


148 


On and Off 


ever hope to acquire. All I needed was some 
foliage among my hair to be a Human Flower 
Pot. In that shape I fell into a home among 
the horses, but I reached the livery stable by a 
painfully circuitous route. This was it: 

On coming back to Houston the dry culvert 
that had been my home before seeking genteel 
employment in the railroad camp was still open 
to me. There I passed a thoughtful night. The 
iron foundry was still in a state of coma, and 
my mud-embalmed garments steered me off the 
track of other jobs. I was a hobo for fair. The 
railroad track leading north looked good to me, 
so at daylight on the second morning I moved 
away from Houston on foot, never to return. 
Any old place would do. My one ambition was 
to shake the dust of Texas from my feet. The 
soil is not so easy to shake when a fellow is 
japanned with that rich alluvium. 

By noon I wearied of the telegraph poles and 
hand car shanties flitting past. At these latter 
institutions I paused and asked for work, but 
my nationality was against me. Keenly did I 
regret not having been born a Swede or Italian, 
so as to inherit a pair of leather pants from 
my father and a good job in America. At mid- 
day I left the track and took a short nap in a 
clump of trees. Professional tramps sleep in the 


149 


The Bread Wagon 

middle of the day, and I had been long enough in 
the business to enjoy certain of the luxuries. I 
awoke with a new idea, which was to switch off 
into the country and hire out to a farmer. All 
the train robber, cowboy and Texas Ranger ro- 
mance had been jolted out of me by this time, 
and I actually yearned to be a farmer. A wagon 
road led away from the track through woods and 
swamps, and I followed it, keeping a sharp look- 
out for farms. Here and there stood a negro 
cabin in the center of a dead and barren field, 
with no sign of life. These were not the kind 
of farms I had seen in Illinois and Iowa. The 
idea of becoming a tiller of the soil began to 
ooze, but there was no use turning back. 

Along toward dusk the smoke and spires of 
a city loomed up in the distance, and at sight 
of them I cut the last link that bound me to the 
farmers. , In this new city, the name of which 
I didn’t know, I would find friends and work 
and get on my feet, or rather off them, for I was 
pretty tired. Within a mile of the place I met 
up with a truck farm, aglow with early spring 
vegetables. The owner, a thin man, with pale 
whiskers, was pulling weeds near the fence. I 
hung my chin over the top rail, and asked him 
the name of the town. 

“Houston,” he said, without looking up. 


150 


On and Off 

“What!” I yelled. “Houston, did you say? 
Why, I left there early this morning, and have 
been walking all day.” 

The truck farmer straightened his long, lean 
back, and took a good look at me. 

“Young stranger,” he said, “I ain’t deef and 
I ain’t crazy. That’s Houston. Be you all going 
thar?” 

He put the query in such a tone that I at once 
hiked on to Houston, without further parley. 
.What’s the use, I argued. The man lives here, 
and I’m a stranger in these parts. He ought to 
know. But how did I get back to Houston, after 
walking for ten hours away from that place 1 This 
proposition made me dizzy. In books of ad- 
venture I had read of lost people wandering in 
a circle. I was not lost, for there was Houston, 
in plain view. Apparently I had got fatally bent 
on my travels. The wagon road, crossed by 
other trails, wound about the country and led me 
astray. It all seems funny now, but the ring 
I walked around a township was no joke in those 
days. No matter whether I rode or strolled 
away from Houston the city was bound to turn 
up again and haunt me. As I neared my bad 
penny I fretted lest another hobo had found the 
dry culvert. 

My happy home was still to let, and footsore 


151 


The Bread Wagon 

and disgusted, I passed the night there, with a 
homeless dog, who came in from a late foray, 
smelling of food I would have been tempted to 
eat had he brought some home. 

One word in this sign, “Livery, Boarding and 
Sale Stable,” on a large building led me to try 
my luck among the horses. The word would 
stand no show on the puzzle page, for you have 
all guessed it by this time. The stable proprie- 
tor did not at first want any hostlers, but he took 
an interest in the mud I carried and asked me 
how I got it. That query opened up a vein of 
conversation that eventually landed me in the 
box stall with the red stallion. In three weeks 
of diligent hustling I had earned 80 cents in 
bunches of 30 and 50 cents, and I doubtless re- 
sembled the first installment of my Texas in- 
come. 

The liveryman had a big heart, and I’ll never 
forget him. When I had reeled off my tale of 
woe he asked me why I didn’t come to him when 
I first struck town. Then he led the way to a 
restaurant and fed the queerest patron ever seen 
in that place. He remained and watched me eat, 
and it was well he did, for no one but a horse 
owner could have paid the bill. In a voice choked 
with wonder and emotion the horsey Samaritan 
offered me a position as chambermaid in his liv- 



152 


Livery Stable Chambermaid Shared a Box Stall. 


153 


The Bread Wagon 

ery stable at 3 per week and board. He and bis 
wife lived in the upper part of the stable and 
boarded the hands. 

Thus I went to bunk in with the equines. My 
duties consisted of making beds for the horses 
and giving massage to overheated hack teams 
with a bit of gunny sack. Another hostler cut 
my hair with a pair of horse clippers while I sat 
on a bucket, and then he helped me to take a 
bath with the hose in the buggy-washing de- 
partment. It was a buggy wash, all right. Dur- 
ing these operations I lost considerable mud and 
felt better for it. I had a good home in the 
stable. It was killing work to tumble out of my 
hay at odd hours and dry a team of lather-cov- 
ered horses, but I soon got used to it. My room- 
mate snorted and kicked a great deal in the night 
with his iron-shod hoofs, and his restive de- 
meanor robbed me of much sleep. 

Among the patrons of the stable was a half- 
breed Mexican named Wood, who drove a night 
hack, paying a stated sum for the nocturnal use 
of the team and vehicle. The fact that Mr. Wood 
had lost the greater part of his nose, bitten off in 
a friendly argument with a fellow night hawk, 
did not predispose one in his favor, but he took 
a hot fancy to me. The reason did not appear 
until later. 


154 


The Bread Wagon 

One evening Mr. Wood said he had never seen 
a white person with whom he would rather asso- 
ciate than myself. That was flattering some, as 
the hackman had negro blood in him. My many 
sterling traits of mind and character, to say noth- 
ing of the way I rubbed sweaty horses, appealed 
so strongly to Mr. Wood he actually pined for 
my society. He spoke about it himself. In fact, 
rather than miss hobnobbing with me at least 
part of the time, the enamored Mr. Wood offered 
me $1 per night to sit with him on the box seat 
of the hack and converse on general topics. As 
he was willing to pay for good society, and as I 
needed the money, I agreed to brighten the life 
of the lonely hackman, since a shift of hours had 
given me the day watch at the barn. 

Night after night, at 8 o’clock, the hack rolled 
out of the stable. Mr. Wood sat on the box, 
soaking up social distinction, with me by his 
side. When waiting at the hack stand in front 
of a saloon, the driver allowed me to curl up in 
the cushions and sleep while he stood at the bar 
and drank milk punches. Sometimes he favored 
me with one of those invigorating beverages, but 
with a fare inside I had to be on the seat with 
him. On most of the trips I drove along the 
dimly lighted streets, at the request of Mr. Wood, 
who assured me that all great hackmen had to 


I Drove Home at 



155 


156 


On and Off 


learn to handle the ribbons at some time or an- 
other, and that he took genuine pleasure in 
teaching me. 

The nights were chilly, and I had no over- 
coat. My friend bought me one just like his 
own. He said if I caught cold and died my 
folks at Mudville, 111., never would forgive him 
for exposing my health. He also gave me a 
hat that resembled his. 

Along toward 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning 
business grew slack, and Mr. Wood had me drive 
him home. He lived on the other side of the 
town, two miles from the stable, but he always 
trusted me with the task of taking the team 
back. Arriving at his house, Mr. Wood handed 
me a silver dollar, and, followed by an affection- 
ate “good-night, my boy,” I drove through the 
middle of the town to the stable. 

Those lonely trips were proud epochs in my 
young life. With coat collar up and hat brim 
down, I fancied that my clever handling of the 
reins led boozy rounders to mistake me for the 
gifted Mr. Wood. For more than a week I en- 
joyed these thrills, and then one night the hack- 
man failed to call for the team at the usual hour. 
About 10 o’clock I strolled up town. A 
mob had collected in and around the morgue, 
and I, too, went in. On a slab in the back 


157 


The Bread Wagon 

room, rested my late friend, Mr. Wood, with 
four Winchester bullets in him, placed where 
they would do the most good. 

From the talk I learned that he and his hack 
had been mixed up in an abduction case from 
another town. Mr. Wood expected the avengers, 
all right, but he didn’t know just when, and I— 
cheerful and obliging idiot— had consented to 
pose as living breastworks, and substitute for the 
modest sum of $1 per night, not in advance. 
Why the men with the guns got him instead 
of me is something which Providence alone can 
explain. What a mark I would have been driv- 
ing back alone from Wood’s house to the stable 
had the avengers been about at that time. But 
they came late, and I lived to spend the few 
dollars earned in the human breastworks busi- 
ness. Since that time I have been more or 
less stingy with my society. Rather than let 
it out at that price per evening I flocked by my- 
self. What I did with the little side money 
earned on the hack is related in the next chap- 
ter, in which I escape from Texas on a fluke. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


How He Bid Adieu to Texas and Aided and 

Abetted Another Boy in Search of Keen Ad- 
ventures. 

All things come to him who waits and saves 
his .coupons and his pawn tickets, if any. Dur- 
ing a short-ration campaign in Texas I wore 
pinned in my scanty attire two pale green slips. 
These were coupons issued by a pawnbroker 
at New Orleans. They represented one silver 
watch and my faithful $2 bark trunk filled with 
fair to middling raiment. The game was for me 
to keep on guessing until I struck a job strong 
enough to amass $12 in one vast lump. There- 
upon the pawnbroker would remit my chattels 
on receipt of the tickets and money. 

The contest lasted about six weeks. By stick- 
ing to the job in a Houston livery stable, which 
paid $3 per week and food, but no sleep to speak 
of, I squeezed $7 from a hard, unyielding world 
and sent for the watch. I hung it on myself for 
a couple of days and felt tolerably good in pos- 
session. But as I was not out for any records 
requiring accurate time, and as my working 
clothes had about gone the limit, I found an- 
158 


159 


The Bread Wagon 

other berth for the watch in a Houston pawn- 
shop, and had the trunk shipped from New Or- 
leans. That was financiering some on small capi- 
tal. 

About the time my boiled shirts, collars and 
Sunday suit arrived the foundry foreman hunted 
me up at the stable. I had left a call in case 
anything happened, and he was there to tell me 
about it. A railroad shop in another town had 
burned and the work was transferred to Hous- 
ton. The local shop would blaze forth in all its 
sulphurous glory the next week and needed 
hands in a hurry. In negotiating with me the 
foreman said a livery stable was the last place 
to look for iron molders. He had his doubts 
when he beheld me in tattered overalls and a 
40-cent undershirt manicuring a lean hack horse. 
But he was up against it. So was I, and we 
agreed to give each other a trial. 

With mingled feelings of joy and sadness I 
resigned from the box stall on Sunday night and 
bade farewell to my fellow-chambermaids in the 
stable. The liveryman gave us all a little coffee 
supper at the restaurant and sent me with a note 
to the keeper of a mechanic’s boarding house. 
Thus I returned to an abode of luxury at $4 
per week. That night I slept in a real bed with 
sheets and pillows— the first spasm of downy 


160 


On and Off 


ease that had soothed my youthful frame in more 
than two months. At that I didn’t sleep well. 
It was too' easy. I missed the rumble of car- 
riage wheels on the barn floor and the pensive 
snorts of the red stallion who shared my 
apartment at the stable. Then I worried some 
about the new job on which I would debut in 
the morning at the magnificent stipend of two 
bucks per day. All I cared for was to hold it 
down long enough to earn a get-away stake and 
fade forever from the Texas landscape. 

While the job lasted I was a great success 
at making brake shoes for freight cars. At the 
expiration of a week malarial fever hit me, and 
I took the count. The shop was located on a 
stagnant lagoon, and one week was sufficient to 
fill me up with germs. I spent the next week 
in my new bed and got up dizzy and wabbly 
and busted. My prospects made me think of 
the fellow who said if he owned Texas and hell 
he would rent Texas and live in the other place. 
Too sick to work and with my name stricken 
from Dun’s and Bradstreet’s, the hotel man said 
the North was the place for people with fever 
and no money. I agreed with him, and he ac- 
cepted my trunk and overcoat as the first move 
on a start in the right direction. With the board 
money thus saved by once more divorcing my 


161 


The Bread Wagon 

goods and chattels I bought a cheap valise and 
a cut-rate ticket to Galveston. 

My scheme was to make New York by water, 
and a steamer from that port was due at Gal- 
veston the day I blew in. She was anchored 
outside the bar waiting on the tide when I reached 
the wharf with my little gripsack, one chill and 
fifty cents in ready money. The fare was $50, 
but that small discrepancy did not jar me. I 
wore my best clothes, a new hair-cut and a silk 
cap. I had made one voyage across the Gulf as 
cabin boy and knew the ropes. If the steamer 
had a vacant berth it was me to New York in 
style. 

When the big black hull swung into her slip 
I met the end of the gangplank coming ashore. 
There might be other boys desirous of side- 
stepping Texas, and I was taking no chances. 
But there was no need of hurry. The steward 
had all the cabin boys he wanted and he fired 
me ashore again almost as soon as the gang- 
plank made connection. That was my finish, I 
thought, as I sat on the mooring pile and gazed 
hopelessly at the steamer. Bankrupt, sick and 
friendless, death would find me in Texas. In a 
fine fit of mental agony I beheld my bones 
bleaching in an unkempt alley behind some liv- 
ery stable, and my folks at Mudville, 111., await- 


162 


On and Off 


ing tidings from the absent one. I even tried 
to sing, “Oh, Where is My Wandering Boy?” 
bnt choked on the plaintive melody. 

It was indeed a doleful picture, with but one 
ray of comfort. In case I lived and escaped 
to the North I would consecrate my life in warn- 
ing foolish boys away from the Lone Star State. 
My own Texas experience, if related on the lec- 
ture platform with me starring as the Horrible 
Example, or published in tract form, might save 
many a boy the hardship and misery I had un- 
dergone. While I still sizzled with these noble 
thoughts a bullet-headed boy in a blue cap and 
short alpaca jacket came off the steamer and 
posted a letter across the street. He took a 
sharp look at me as he passed, and on the re- 
turn trip he paused to converse. 

‘ ‘ Do you live in Texas ? ’ ’ the 'boy inquired, 
with a sort of loving accent in the “Texas.” 

“Been here a couple of months,” was my an- 
swer. 

“What kind of a place is it?” he asked in a 
whisper, at the same time casting a furtive side 
glance at the steamer. 

There was such an eager tone in the query 
that I tumbled at once. Here was a New York 
cabin boy fatally stuck on Texas, and my ten- 
der scheme to save such giddy youths blew up 


163 


The Bread Wagon 

in a flash of new hope. I lured him to his doom 
the best I knew how. 

“Texas is God’s own country,” I said, fer- 
vently. “More real sport and adventure to 
the square inch than all the Northern States in 
a bunch. I’ve had the time of my life here,” I 
added, and which was strictly true, but I omit- 
ted details. 

“Well, I’m thinking of—,” he hesitated and 
blushed, “of stopping off here awhile. Slinging 
hash at sea is too slow for me. I’ve got a Smith 
& Wesson self-cocker. Think I’ll need it?” 

“You certainly will,” I assured him, having 
seen self-cockers hung up among the unredeemed- 
pledges-for-sale in pawnshop windows. 

“Good-by, old pard,” said the cabin boy, 
wringing my hand warmly. “I must be going. 
Mum’s the word, you know.” 

What he meant by that was not clear to me, 
but it must have sounded good to him. As the 
future train robber disappeared aboard ship I 
sneaked into the wharf shed and watched the 
gangway through a crack. What if he should 
balk? I asked myself in a torment of doubt. 
Things had started my way, and I clung to the 
crack like a nervous gambler waiting for the 
turn that would make or break him. In half 
an hour the bullet-headed boy popped out of 


/ 



Texas is God’s Own Country. 


165 


The Bread Wagon 

the cabin. He wore his go-ashore clothes, car- 
ried a small bundle and held one hand on his 
hip pocket. That must have been the revolver 
ready for instant use. To an outsider this scene 
might have suggested humorous features, but it 
was a sad and serious piece of business. Heaven 
help the other bullet-headed boy! And yet he 
had more to start with than I did in launching 
a Texas career. Doubtless he got along very 
well while his health lasted. 

No sooner was he clear of the ship than I 
broke away from the crack, went on board and 
stood around so that the steward could fall over 
me every little while. It was plain to observe 
that the chief steward was disturbed about some- 
thing. He conferred with his assistants, and 
they seemed to be searching the ship. Finally, 
the chief interviewed me. 

“Ain’t you the boy that wanted to ship a 
while ago?” he asked. 

“Sure,” I said. 

“Well, bring your dunnage aboard. We need 
a boy. One of the crew has skipped out.” All 
of which was ancient history to me. 

The upshot of it was I sailed for New York 
impaired in health and pocket, but vastly bet- 
ter off than the boy who succeeded me in the 
task of swinging Texas around by the tail. I 


166 


On and Off 


trust lie potted a few wicked cowboys and res- 
cued some imperiled maidens from the lair of 
the robber chieftain. Texas is full of just such 
jobs waiting for intrepid boys to come down from 
the North and straighten things out. I’ve done 
my share toward the improving and uplifting 
of that benighted Commonwealth, and if ever 
I return to Texas it will be on a writ of habeas 
corpus. 

All the cabin crew, with the exception of a 
fat stewardess, built like a Bartlett Pear, treated 
me kindly. That good lady had little to do but 
fret about me, though I did not. suspect her 
secret at the time. My pallor, due to sickness, 
and closely cropped hair interested the steward- 
ess in my past. She was forever dragging re- 
form schools and penitentiaries into the talk 
when I was around, and then watching keenly 
to see me blush or display other symptoms of 
guilt. Beyond a doubt she took me for a jail- 
bird. She made it a point to hasten up and 
lock her stateroom door on seeing me near it, 
and had a habit of slapping her skirt pocket and 
feeling to see if her watch had departed. Not until 
I had been around the world some more did the 
conduct of the stewardess smite me, and then I 
blushed. Since then I Ve had little use for 
stewardesses, and read with interest newspaper 


The Bread Wagon 


167 


accounts of them falling overboard in mid-ocean. 

I always wore my hair chopped close in those 
days in a style called “shingled,” and it looked 
pretty good. Now I would look even better 
with the top of my head shingled, weather- 
boarded or tar-roofed. And there are others. 

We carried but one male passenger, and he 
was a whole shipload of people, according to 
his tell. Mr. Evans was a retired charcoal 
burner, and a bad man from the piney woods of 
Texas. For twenty years, he said, Mr. Evans 
had been reducing dense forests to charcoal at 
twenty-two cents per barrel, and leaving a trail 
of unmarked graves among the stumps. What 
was in the graves Mr. Evans did not say, yet 
the way he spoke of them made our blood run 
cold. Between the bad man and my mysterious 
prison record the stewardess yielded to spells 
bordering on the hysterical. 

The bad man from the charcoal regions cer- 
tainly looked bad, but not in the sense he wished 1 
to inspire the public. He wore a slouch hat, 
collarless flannel shirt and a suit of rust-colored 
jeans. His brogan shoe tops and trouser legs 
lacked several inches of meeting, and the gaps 
exposed a pair of sockless ankles that looked like 
two sticks of charcoal. The bad man carried 
his trademark all right. Dressed up and drunk, 





168 


Wandered About, Inquiring if Anyone Wanted to be Killed. 


169 


The Bread Wagon 

Mr. Evans wandered about the ship day and 
night, inquiring in a soft Southern dialect if any 
one desired to be killed. We had a score or so 
of female suffragists — fat and lean ladies with 
aggressive chins, heavy brows and funny bon- 
nets— on the way to a convention at New York. 
The bad man didn’t offer to kill any of the 
ladies. He was polite, and asked them to drink 
with him, and promised to expose the innermost 
secrets of the charcoal burning business. 

When not thirsting for gore, Mr. Evans dozed 
in a steamer chair on the forward deck, resting 
his heels on a camp stool. This attitude of ex- 
treme nonchalance widened the gap between 
trouser legs and brogans and placed the char- 
coal ankles prominently before the public. No 
one minded this exhibit but the female suffra- 
gists, and they pestered the captain mightily. 
It was a shame, they said, for a man to invade 
polite society with his ankles in that condi- 
tion. 

“All right, ladies,” said the captain, who was 
a gallant gentleman, “I’ll have 'em scrubbed 
for you. Anything to oblige the sex. It will 
take place at 10 o’clock to-morrow morning.” 

That was the third day out from Galveston, 
and sure enough, at 10 next morning the bold 
skipper and four deck hands surrounded the 


170 


On and Off 


bad man where he sat dozing with his heels hung 
up on the camp stool. The captain stood di- 
rectly in front of Mr. Evans, wearing his hands v 
in the side pocket of a large pea jacket. At a 
signal from the skipper the four deck hands 
yanked off the brogans and set in to scour the 
charcoal ankles. Mr. Evans never moved. The 
few spots on his face bare of fuzzy whiskers 
turned a dull white, then red, beneath the shad- 
ow of his drooping sombrero. To appear wholly 
at ease the bad man ground out a feeble snore 
which deceived no one. He slept throughout tho 
operation while the suffrage ladies looked on 
in silent approbation; and when the deck hands 
had finished, the ankles of Mr. Evans resembled 
peeled beets. 

The captain and his accomplices withdrew. Mr. 
Evans slept on. When out of sight and earshot 
the captain removed his hands from his coat 
pockets. In one he held a match ; in the other 
a cigar, which he lighted and went about his 
business. The scrubbing incident closed. That 
certainly was a new way to tame a bad citizen. 
Mr. Evans was heard of no more on that voyage. 
The possession of clean feet broke his proud 
spirit and he lurked in obscure corners— sober, 
sullen, morose and unhappy. 

I have withheld the name of the ship and her 


171 


The Bread Wagon 

captain, both of whom are still in commission, 
lest the scrubbing incident should hurt the traf- 
fic in charcoal burners, retired and otherwise. 
The skipper exceeded his authority somewhat, 
but Mr. Evans was new to the sea and didn’t 
know it. He was awed. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


A Chapter Wherein He Found New York Too 

Big and Vast, so They Put Him off at Buffalo. 

On reaching New York from Texas, following 
a long period of food and financial depression, 
the Bread Wagon was all but backed up to the 
wharf to meet me; and for quite a while I rode 
on the front seat. The captain of the steamer 
said I had no legal claim on him for wages, since 
I had taken the place of a cabin boy who ran 
away at Galveston. Still, in the goodness of his 
heart, the skipper gave me $4 in new $2 hills for 
toiling a matter of ten days on his boat. Half 
of this money went for a blue cap with gold 
lace on it, as I contemplated making another 
voyage as the Real Thing; hut after scrubbing 
paintwork one day I soured on the sea and lit 
out, first selling my gorgeous cap to the ship’s 
carpenter for $1. 

That goal of so many restless spirits— New 
York— was too big, too vast and overwhelming 
for me. The immensity of things dazzled me, 
and I got cold feet on the iron molding propo- 
sition because I couldn’t see any foundries. 
Some years later, when I again blew in as a 
172 


173 


The Bread Wagon 

newspaper reporter for Mr. Hearst, the village 
wasn’t big enough. Strange, isn’t it, how the 
universe shrinks and shrivels when a young fel- 
low sets out to push it around with a lead pen- 
cil? But while my $3 lasted I hung on to the 
metropolis, taking in the sights, mostly from 
the outside. Then I slid on to Albany, deeming 
that town about my size. They say the scenery 
along the Hudson is great. That may be true 
enough, but when the tourist makes the trip in 
the night in the paddle box of a steamboat the 
view is limited chiefly to foam and bubbles, and 
he is moved at times by that moist feeling. 

On the morning of Decoration Day a dead 
hero, without any rose garlands on him, stepped 
off at Albany with his little damp bundle and 
spent some quiet hours along the river front 
drying out. It was like Sunday. Next morn- 
ing, before 8 o’clock, I struck a fine job and 
could have had several others. Many patriotic 
iron molders of Albany had scattered bright 
flowers on the graves of our nation’s dead the 
previous day, and couldn’t get their eyes open 
in time to go to work. One of the very best 
seasons to seek jobs in industrial circles is right 
after a holiday. The bosses are out looking 
for you. One month finished my course at 
Albany. I fell in with a crowd of gay young 


174 


The Bread Wagon 

men about town who doted on beer and variety 
shows, and the pace was too rapid for a sport 
brought up at Mudville, 111. 

One Saturday night after a wild debauch, and 
with twenty cents’ worth of beer in my skin, 
I broke into the shop for my tools and started 
West on Monday morning on a scalped emigrant 
ticket. Riding on that kind of transportation 
and in that kind of a train is but little better 
than walking. The traveler may choose his own 
air and company while hoofing it down the pike. 
The coaches were packed with soapless foreign- 
ers, landed the night before, from an emigrant 
ship, and those who had no babies in arms prior 
to leaving home corrected the omission on the 
way. It was the nearest I ever came to tour- 
ing with a circus and menagerie under one 
roof. 

The day was the Fourth of July, and I cele- 
brated my independence by sitting on a car 
platform, inhaling deep draughts of ozone, free- 
dom and New York Central cinders. They 
put me off at Buffalo, and I was glad my 
scalped ticket didn’t call for any more. An- 
other hundred miles and the ticket would have 
been asphyxiated. My capital consisted of sixty 
cents and faith in the holiday theory — that a 
job would turn up in the morning. In the first 


The Refreshments Committee Tapped a Keg of Beer. 


\ 




175 



176 


On and Off 


shop I entered the boss said three of his patriots 
were still absent, celebrating our glorious natal 
day, now more generally observed as Lockjaw 
Day. So I fell into a sand pile and got busy 
making scales that could weigh anything from 
a letter to a locomotive. This comparative range 
is mentioned to show my wonderful versatility 
in the scale building line. 

Buffalo claimed me for a period of six months, 
during which time I never lost a day from the 
scale works. About all I remember of the city 
proper is that in some places they sold two 
glasses of beer for five cents. On Saturday 
nights an immature mechanic, if so disposed, 
could take home a load of peaches for 15 cents. 
I joined the Iron Moulders’ Union of North 
America, No. 84, and became a full-fledged ar- 
tisan. When the union gave its annual ball I 
was a lifelike member of the reception commit- 
tee— stood at the hall door wearing on my swell- 
ing chest a huge purple rosette, with gold fringe 
on it, I was a Lalapaloosa, all right. The man 
who worked beside me in the shop — a Dutchman 
— was the committee on refreshments. 

Soon after the doors opened he tapped a keg 
of beer, without which the L. F. toe can not 
be tripped in some localities. Then, taking a 
cluster of six schooners by the handles, the com- 


177 


The Bread Wagon 

mittee proceeded to fill them at the spigot. He 
loaded five. The sixth glass was upside down, 
and when the stream struck the bottom the 
Dutchman, with keen presence of mind, reversed 
his hand, spilling the five full glasses in order 
to load the sixth. We held an indignation meet- 
ing on the spot, and fined the refreshment com- 
mittee for malfeasance in office, and it was only 
by the cleverest kind of politics he escaped be- 
ing expelled from the union. For a space! of 
three weeks his own shopmates refused to speak 
to him. 

A rare combination of business and pleasure 
made a gay round of life at Buffalo. Weekdays 
I toiled in the sand and hot metal, and on Sun- 
days in the summer months I barked for a Niag- 
ara Falls excursion. The genius who steered 
these personally conducted tours of yaps to and 
from the tumbling waters was a fresco artist 
who had a friend boarding at my beanery. 
That’s how I got in. No tickets were sold in 
advance, as the cautious Buffalo sightseers 
wanted a line on the weather before doing any- 
thing rash with their 50-cent pieces. If the day 
opened fair, the excursion train was assembled 
at the station with a barker at each double plat- 
form selling tickets out of hand. All I got 
from this soft snap was a weekly peep at one 


178 


On and Off 


of nature’s wonders and my dinner; but since 
I was seeing the world, that helped some. 

At length prosperity palled on me. Things 
were coming too easy at the scale foundry, so 
I quit Buffalo with my union card and moved 
on to Chicago. There, in a moment of reckless 
extravagance, I purchased another $2 trunk, 
which indirectly led me into a raging holocaust, 
hut the trunk and its valuable contents escaped 
the flames. At Chicago I worked for the Crane 
Elevator Company, and boarded in North Sanga- 
mon street with an eminent steamfitter named 
Jim! McCullom, from Muskegon, Mich. We were 
the star boarders, Jim and I, and our home was 
an ideal one of its kind, until, in an evil mo- 
ment, we purchased trunks. Jim never did own 
one, and mine was lost, strayed or stolen in 
the wilds of Texas. When the morbid land- 
lady beheld the new trunks moving in she 
thought we intended to move out— to shake her 
for another and more stylish beanery— so what 
did she do but close up the house the same even- 
ing before supper. This was, indeed, awkward, 
not only for the steamfitter and the iron molder, 
but likewise for two union carpenters, who 
chided Jim and me for buying useless trunks 
and bringing on wholesale eviction. The land- 
lady was so mad and she retired from busi- 


179 


The Bread Wagon 

ness in such a hurry that the ousted quartette 
and its baggage took temporary refuge in one 
of the saloons prevalent in Chicago at that time. 
Now, they tell me, there isn’t a saloon left in 
the city. They are all buffets. 

Anyhow, a man in the future buffet said his 
wife kept boarders around the corner in Lake 
street, and we permitted the good lady to keep 
us until the raging holocaust led to other ar- 
rangements. There were no living ladders and 
human bridges at this fire, nor did we have time 
to spring heroics. Just how the thing started 
and who turned in the first alarm makes no 
difference now. It was enough to learn on that 
frozen midnight that the lurid flames of repor- 
torial renown reached out from the side win- 
dows of a six-story brick oil works, and that 
Jim and I slept the sleep of the toil-wom and 
weary in a frail two-story frame cottage close 
under the lee of the raging holocaust. 

When the landlady’s son— a deaf mute- 
aroused us the shingles had caught and the 
windows were popping with the heat. Jim and 
I roomed on the top floor front, while the dumpy 
little landlady and her husband occupied the 
room directly below. The deaf mute son was 
coming home when he discovered the fire. He 
carried a latch key, but realizing he could raise 


180 


On and Off 


no outcry inside the house, the sagacious mute 
picked up a cobble and battered in the panels 
of the front door. The racket at last awoke us. 

Jim noted the glare shining in our curtain- 
less boudoir windows, and said it was time to 
escape with goods and chattels. I said so, too. 
In those days I combined art with the gentle 
craft of iron molding, and consequently pos- 
sessed more chattels than Jim. He had no side 
line, steamfitting alone being his specialty, while 
I was incumbered with several frenzied crayon 
portraits of relatives on whom I had been prac- 
ticing. We each had a trunk, but owing to the 
absence of valets our wardrobes were somewhat 
scattered.. 

On my suggestion that we protect our Sunday 
suits, even at the risk of life itself, we slid into 
overalls and shop shirts with the dexterity of 
lightning-change artists, and stuffed the contents 
of bureau drawers and closets into the trunks. 
A fusillade of hot bricks on the roof applauded 
this act, but there was no encore. Jim’s trunk 
was no bigger than a soap box, and had a large 
leather cinch buckled about its middle. The 
strap cost more than the trunk. Grabbing the 
strap with one hand, he took hold of my trunk 
with the other, and led the way. I seized the 
rear handle in my right, and with the frenzied 


181 


The Bread Wagon 

crayon portraits tucked under my left arm, the 
procession glided rapidly down the stairs. 

The cottage stood back about fifty feet from 
the street, and the blazing building abutted on the 
pavement. This gave us a fifteen-yard dash over 
which we broke the record, at the same time 
dodging showers of brick and fire and jets of 
icy water, for the department had reached the 
scene. It was only by a miracle that I escaped 
unhurt. Jim also emerged unscathed. Being a 
strong young man naturally and somewhat ex- 
citable, too, Jim held his trunk bodily in one 
hand above his head like a parasol until we 
reached the middle of the street. There we 
rested while Mr. J. McCullom lowered away his 
trunk and took a chew of plug cut smoking 
he found in his overalls. 

J ust at that instant the fat landlady oozed from 
the front door. Her valiant husband had made 
his exit a few seconds earlier, carrying two glass 
cones of hair flowers which Mrs. Spudhash had 
created in her remote and misty youth. At 
noon next day that splendid husband turned up 
heroically drunk, but with these gems intact. 
But what can you expect of a healthy man who 
lets his wife keep boarders? 

When Mrs. Spudhash hopped out of bed she 
pulled on a loose wrapper, belted it at the waist 



The Fat Landlady Oozed From the Front Door. 


182 


183 


The Bread Wagon 

and darted into a closet. Between the bed 
ticks lay a purse containing $80, but the lady 
never thought of mere money. From the closet 
she rescued six bandboxes, each containing a 
bonnet that she had made. Mrs. Spudhash’s 
hobby was bonnets, mostly of rejuvenated vel- 
vet that still looked weary and green plumes 
of no particular epoch. She starred them on 
all occasions where a bonnet could be worn, and 
now was the time for a grand wholesale display 
of millinery. 

Amid the withering deluge of cinders, flame 
and smoke my intrepid landlady danced out of 
her blazing portal, balancing the stock of band- 
boxes, piled six high, with the skill of a Japan- 
ese juggler. Moving slowly so as not to spill 
any bonnets, she had covered half the distance 
to the gate when a fiery thunderbolt from heaven 
in the shape of a redhot nail, four inches long, 
fluttered into the lady’s bosom. This may have 
been a warm rebuke called down by Mrs. Spud- 
hash’s inopportune display of vanity, and again 
it may not. 

At any rate the nail saved her life. Dropping 
her bonnets, the bulky lady emitted a shriek 
high above the tumult of the holocaust. She 
gained the open street in two flat jumps, just 
as an avalanche of brick and blazing timbers 


184 


The Bread Wagon 

crashed down on the cottage and into the yard, 
burying the velvet bonnets beneath twenty feet 
of debris. The nail was saved, however. Mrs. 
Spudhash carried this souvenir of our holocaust 
three squares before the police could overhaul 
her, and then the nail was quite cold. 

With the hair bouquets and the nail, all they 
had saved from the wreck, the thoughtful Spud- 
hashes again set up housekeeping, hut Jim and 
I did not return to this new abode. While not 
insistent in the matter of luxuries, we consid- 
ered the furniture inadequate and not in har- 
mony with our trunks, which had escaped with- 
out a scratch. So the steamfitter and myself 
went elsewhere to put in our meals and take out 
our sleep. 


/ 


CHAPTER XV. 


Bach to Mudville to “Accept a Position,” and 

Aivay Again to the Wilds of the West. 

Every now and then some family breaks loose 
with the woozy idea its beautiful and brainy son 
is much too good for his job, whatever it may he, 
and sets about to elevate him in life. An epi- 
demic of this sort hit me after hatting around the 
world a couple of years, reveling in marvelous 
adventures and hairbreadth escapes by field and 
flood and livery stable. The folks at Mudville, 
111., said it was time to settle down and become 
an ornament to society; that my intellect, which 
was then vivid enough to pour hot metal into 
holes in the sand, fitted me for something 
higher and nobler and more recherche than iron 
molding. 

At the time this outburst of family solici- 
tude blocked my chosen career I was earning 
$12 a week in a Chicago foundry and paying 
my monthly dues into the union. Still, that 
wasn’t good enough for me, so one day in mid- 
winter the Author of my Being came on and 
yanked me back to Mudville. He had, he said, 

185 


186 


On and Off 


secured for me a position— not job— in the vil- 
lage ice cream parlor, where I was to work for 
nothing and learn a genteel business. Note the 
difference between a job and a position. At 
the former I made two dusty dollars per day; 
in the latter I wore a clean smile and a laun- 
dered shirt, with the prospect of pulling down 
something like $3 a week in the misty future. 
In fact, I was slated to become a regular dude. 

There wasn’t much doing when I butted into 
the higher life as depicted in a country ice 
cream foundry in winter. It would have been 
more congenial tending the lobster stall in a 
city fish market. The Arctic soda fountain which 
had a thirsty Polar bear climbing the North 
Pole for a glass of sparkling sarsaparilla at 
the top, was swathed in gunny sacks, and the 
ice cream freezer was frozen fast to the side- 
walk in front of the Parlor. However, they let 
me turn the peanut roaster, sweep out the shells 
and monkey with the kerosene lamps. Three 
weeks I clung to this genteel situation like a 
man afloat in deep water with a shingle, while 
my dinky competence amassed in the foundry- 
coarse and uncouth place— dwindled softly. 

“This is the limit, and then some,” I said to 
myself, after which I borrowed $15 from an opu- 
lent clerk in the pants emporium and sidestepped 


187 


The Bread Wagon 

Mudville in the night without issuing any hand- 
bills regarding my movements. 

The first stop was at Omaha, the theatre of 
social and industrial triumphs two years be- 
fore. There was no one in the old shop I knew 
save a son of the former boss. His father, he 
said, was running a gigantic shop at Leadville 
and wanted vast quantities of molders. The son 
was going on in a short while, and he advised 
me to burn the rails to Colorado without loss 
of time and cuddle down with the old man. It 
was me to Leadville on this straight tip. 

I reached the great mining camp, high up in 
the mountains, the possessor of $1.50 and some 
hand-baggage. The gigantic foundry, that had 
gone daffy for want of hands, was a miserable 
board shack containing Old Man Thomas and one 
dejected looking molder prodding around in some 
half-frozen sand. The old man was startled to 
see me and he choked, and spat copiously when 
I reeled off the pipe dream his son had smoked 
for my benefit at Omaha. Maybe the boss had 
blown his bugle by letter and the son was inno- 
cent of pipey deeds. Anyhow, there wasn’t 
enough work to keep the foreman and his hired 
man warm. 

However, the prospect didn’t daze me. I was 
dazed already, having been two days and nights 


188 


On and Off 


in a day coach without sleep. Mr. Thomas kind- 
ly forsook his job and volunteered to help me 
find a cheap place in which to slumber a few 
paragraphs ; he would do that much for old 
times’ sake. We found lodgings over a keno 
joint, and I had no sooner turned in than the 
old man was back, thumping at my boudoir door. 
The dejected looking molder Mr. Thomas had 
left at the shack shop knew the foreman’s son 
was coming on from Omaha. Mistaking me 
for that favored offspring, the dejected mechanic 
jumped his job rather than wait and be fired 
in the evening. He was a proud and haughty 
spirit anyhow. The old man came hustling back 
to tell me this, and, because I needed the money, 
I crawled out of bed and went to work at $5 
a day. Some people are bom to luck and others 
stumble into it while walking in their sleep. 

Business picked up a bit by the time the son 
arrived, and the boss found work for us all. 
But there was another less fortunate victim of 
this gigantic foundry swindle. This was B. 
Jones, a furnace tender, who had worked with 
us at Omaha. Like myself, the confiding Jones 
took the tip and galloped on from some place 
in Iowa. He landed in camp a bankrupt, and 
was eking out a greasy existence as a dishwasher 
in a restaurant. Sometimes I called on Mr. 


189 


The Bread Wagon 

Jones and found him enveloped in an air of ex- 
treme melancholy and a blue apron, swabbing 
gravy off the plates in a large tub. Jones was 
a diplomat. He had soured on the Thomas out- 
fit, for cause, and eventually he turned me 
against them by depicting the joys of railroad- 
ing in Idaho. I had saved up $60, and when 
Jones learned this he said it was time to start. 
He would show the way to Idaho, while I backed 
the enterprise. Sometimes I think B. Jones was 
working me. 

To save railroad fare to Denver, which would 
have taken half my capital, we walked out of 
Leadville, over Mosquito Pass, 14,000 feet in 
the air, pack-laden and bucking a blizzard. We 
were sixteen hours reaching the valley on the 
other side of the range, half dead from cold 
and fatigue. There we encountered a wander- 
ing woodchopper and his boy, bound to Denver 
by wagon. The party camped that night in a 
deserted log cabin, in the mountains, and the 
woodchoppers hauled us to Denver in the course 
of a week. Then the wily Jones unfolded his 
scheme, which was nothing more than a pair 
of fine jobs in a railroad construction camp. 
I kicked on that, having had one experience in 
a Texas swamp, but Jones assured me, on his 
honor, that Idaho was all dry land. He had 


190 


On and Off 


been there and knew. The Oregon Short Line 
was building from Granger, Wyo., on the Union 
Pacific, to Umatilla, Ore., on the Columbia river. 
In that wild and desert region good men were 
scarce, and Jones said they needed us. 

The Short Line office at Denver gave us lab- 
orers’ passes to American Falls, Idaho, on the 
representation of Jones that we were expert dril- 
lers and blasters of lava rock, bridge builders, 
mule skinners, and what not. I bought blank- 
kets and grub, mostly airtight in tin cans, and 
we pulled out for Idaho in a special train of 
four condemned emigrant cars jerked along by 
one crippled freight engine. Onr party com- 
prised 400 select outcasts, from all parts of the 
world, including 100 Italians jammed like angle 
worms in the forward coach. The exclusive com- 
pany in the three remaining cars made up of 
confirmed railroad laborers, tin-horn gamblers on 
the pork, jim-jams specialists, escaped convicts, 
horse thieves, a few Turks and one Greek, mur- 
derers , embezzlers, wife-beaters, alimony dod- 
gers, plain bums and Mr. Jones and his financial 
backer. 

I saw plenty of bottles, but not a single cake 
of soap in the entire caravan. However, my 
chaperon said it was all right and that we soon 
would be there. At that, I liked the prospect 


191 


The Bread Wagon 

better than the ice cream parlor at Mudville. 
There always is variety and some spice to be 
found in humanity in bulk. 

It was pretty cheesy going for a while after 
leaving Green River Junction, Wyo. During the 
stop at that classic flag station the Italian con- 
tingent, prowling in an alley behind the grocery, 
found a box of quarantined salt codfish. This 
edible at its best is not a thing of rare and fra- 
grant perfume, and when the dagoes set about 
boiling the codfish in the forward car, with the 
train in motion, the wafted odors incited the 
trailing outcasts to murder. The fish fiends saw 
the avengers coming and barricaded their car 
door, but that did not bottle up the symptoms of 
a hot dinner. One fertile outcast contributed a 
rubber boot which was chopped in small pieces. 
Other daring spirits produced a gunny sack and 
a Committee of Abating Nuisance mounted to 
the roof of the Italian dining car. 

In the front end of the coach was the stove, 
which had a straight pipe leading from the fire 
up through the car roof. Into this pipe the 
committee poured the minced gum boot and then 
plugged the pipe with the sack. Instantly the 
flavor of overwrought codfish faded away like 
the dew of the morning, and the Italians would 
have done likewise had they seen the ghost of 



192 


193 


The Bread Wagon 

a chance. Wreaths, spirals and streaks of dark 
purple smoke floated from the car windows until 
the heads of the strangling Italians blocked those 
openings. Two of our men guarded the front 
door with knives. The rear exit, was so effectu- 
ally barricaded on the inside the frenzied inmates 
themselves couldn’t open it. 

Stray flashes of the cremating gum boot pene- 
trated the rear coaches, but the outcasts climbed 
to the roofs, and thus diluted the main current 
with fresh air, while the penned-up Italians splut- 
tered and gasped in the fumigating oven. Both 
sides of the car were draped in garlands and fes- 
toons of unhappy creatures, hanging from the 
windows, and it was said half a dozen or so fell 
off and never were heard of more. I learned 
afterward the Italians expected the stuff in the 
stove to blow up with fearful carnage, and com- 
ing from a bomb-building race, this fear buffaloed 
the whole crowd. There must have been a Dago 
or two from Paterson, N. J., in that bunch. In 
time the gum boot calmed down and the surviv- 
ing codfish fiends fell back into their car pale, 
sick and exhausted. The gum boot was a beauti- 
ful idea in a way, for the remainder of the trip 
the tourists in the forward car stuck to cold 
victuals. 

I never care to criticise the likes and dislikes 


194 


On and Off 


or the eating habits of my fellow-beings, but, hon- 
estly, in this instance I feel the Dagoes got all 
that was coming to them, and got it hot. Gum 
boot, properly applied, is one of the best disin- 
fectants I know of for shopworn codfish. Try it 
some time. To my notion, the Italian is rapidly 
supplanting the Digger Indian in this country. 
You seldom see him without his pick and shovel. 
This observation has no special bearing on the 
fish story, hut I couldn ’t help wedging it in as a 
delicate little bon mot. 

Thus, and in other harmless ways, did the out- 
casts, Mr. Jones and myself, beguile the days of 
weary travel. We ate, slept, breathed and had 
our being on the cushionless seats, which were 
harder than the pale blue benches at the circus. 
At Ogden all hands took a change of venue to 
those openwork, peekaboo cattle cars, fitted with 
backless benches. The cattle had but recently 
finished their journey, though no one informed 
us of that fact. Again I spoke to Mr. Jones 
about our general affairs. He told me to cheer 
up— that in two more days and nights he would 
produce Idaho, as per agreement. To prove he 
had a kindly eye and mind focussed on my wel- 
fare, the versatile Jones whittled me a wooden 
spoon, with which to partake of Boston beans 
direct from the can. When not otherwise em- 


195 


The Bread Wagon 

ployed, I wore that spoon in the upper left-hand 
pocket of my vest. The spoon was the only per- 
sonal ornament I possessed, being at that period 
a plain and unassuming youth. 

One week from the Denver gateway our swine 
special paused abruptly at American Falls, owing 
to the absence of any more track. The Falls 
marked the outpost of civilization in that direc- 
tion. The few inhabitants lived in tents and caves 
with canvas roofs. Having neither tent nor cave, 
Mr. Jones and I pre-empted a patch of tall weeds 
with fuzzy tops. Once more I tackled Mr. Jones 
regarding the giddy sport of railroading in the 
remote West. Jones made a brutal retort about 
me being a cheap knocker. Maybe I was a good 
thing, not, to buy him beans and blankets for the 
doubtful privilege of becoming a castaway— to 
inhabit the earth like a prairie dog minus his 
burrow. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Scratching Gravel with a Mormon Outfit, Build- 
ing Railroads in the Idaho Desert. 

In tlae last sad narrative of my woes I left my- 
self marooned on the Eastern edge of the desert 
at American Falls, Idaho. An unfinished bridge 
spanned Snake river at this point. Beyond 
stretched five hundred miles of sage brush, lava 
beds, mountains and forest wilds that offered 
superior exit to the Pacific Coast; behind lay the 
railroad, over which none but persons of ample 
means could travel eastward, as the free work 
trains ran one way only. Therefore, it was me 
to the forest primeval with my little pack. 

To a certain extent I was like the ant who puts 
the sluggard wise. The ant sets forth on a jour- 
ney and encounters a telegraph pole. Instead of 
passing around the base, the energetic ant, being 
full of ginger, climbs up one side of the pole, 
crosses the top and skates down the other side, 
after which the intelligent insect proceeds merrily 
on its way. There was no thought of turning back 
and I had not time to go around. 

A Mormon outfit that had a section of roadbed 
to build at a point fifty miles away in the desert 
* 196 


197 


The Bread Wagon 

picked me up as a valued asset, and the caravan 
of mules and canvas-covered wagons moved ma- 
jestically across the sandy waste. The boss of the 
outfit, a large hairy Mormon, traveled with all 
the comforts of home. His personal retinue con- 
sisted of eight subdued wives and forty-six chil- 
dren. We looked like an orphan asylum out for 
a straw ride, minus the straw. Three wagons, 
each drawn by six mules, transported the family. 
The proprietor and his wives, in a congested state 
of connubial felicity, led the procession. Their 
offspring rode in two double-decked wagons built 
after the manner of menagerie cages. Large and 
medium-sized children occupied the lower com- 
partments, and fought each other to a finish, 
while the tots enjoyed the better air and scenery 
afforded by the roof gardens. 

Behind the nursery straggled at least twenty 
huge wagons enechelon; but I didn’t know that 
until years afterward, when I saw pictures of 
battleships enechelon at Hampton Roads. This 
formation was an idea of the boss Mormon, who 
was a frugal man. The drivers and workmen 
comprising the rear guard kept a sharp lookout 
for sunhonnets, shoes, playthings and such chil- 
dren as dropped themselves overboard along the 
way. Progress was slow because of heavy going 
over a roadless route and the frequent stops made 


198 


On and Off 


to tally up the kindergarten. Six days were re- 
quired to cover the fifty miles, much time being 
lost in the construction of bridges across dry gul- 
lies and hustling to find water for the animals. 

Something like one hundred men and boys rep- 
resented the bone and sinew of the expedition. 
We worked our passage to the scene of actual toil 
in return for hoard and lodging en route. There 
was little to do except lighten the pathway of the 
mules by pushing the heavy wagons from behind 
and hauling on the wheels in sandy ruts. 

The vehicles were laden to the guards with 
plows, scrapers and provisions, mostly salt pork 
and beans in bulk. At the camp fires, night and 
morning, we cooked viands enough to last until 
the next halt. Each man carried his own blank- 
ets, in which he slept on the ground beside the 
wagons and listened to the coyote cooing to its 
mate in the stilly watches of the night. Quite 
poetical ! 

Polygamy, as practiced in that grading camp 
outfit, was a rare and pleasing spectacle when 
Mr. Simpkins planted his family in the desert at 
our journey’s end. He carried a ready-made 
community with which to populate any region he 
chose to infest. His eight wives all dressed alike 
in limp blue sunhonnets and limper red calico 
gowns, which obliterated whatever beauty and 


199 


The Bread Wagon 

shape those unfortunate females may have pos- 
sessed. One sallow, biscuit-fed Mrs. Simpkins 
weighed ninety pounds; another ranged close to 
300 and was built on the lines of a mud scow. 
Side by side, these two suggested a herring and 
a halibut. ' 

There was method in Mr. Simpkins’ multitudi- 
nous joy sharers. They fried salt pork for the 
hoboes and saved the expense of employing 
Chinese for that purpose. A pack of shaggy dogs 
herded the children in their waking hours. 

From out the chaos of that wind-swept, sun- 
blistered caravan of tired babies and hardened 
men grew a village containing many of the latest 
improvements, including a waterworks. 

On a level-stretch midway of the section we in- 
tended to grade Mr. Simpkins waved his wand 
and the city burst from its shell. All hands lived 
in tents. Little canvas structures of the. army 
pattern were set up for the men, with the Simp- 
kins layout as a sort of government seething in 
the middle. One tent as large as that used by the 
fly-by-night country circus housed the eight wives 
and forty-six children. 

A long, narrow tent attached to one side of the 
Simpkins abode served as a dining hall, in which 
the wives elected to that service did the honors 
three times per day. Pork and beans, flapjacks 


200 


The Bread Wagon 

and a flour gravy known * as “Mormon white” 
stirred our jaded appetites some. Occasionally 
the ladies passed out a little “Hereafter,” alias 
dessert, in the shape of dried fruit stewed in river 
water. The nearest water— Snake river— was 
twelve miles distant, so Mr. Simpkins installed a 
water wagon. He built a tank on wheels, caulked 
the seams with white lead and placed one man 
and four mules in charge. This system was kept 
in operation night and day in order to supply the 
camp, and the river water didn’t lose anything 
after sloshing twelve miles in the tank. 

One evening at dusk the water wagon straggled 
into camp in charge of the faithful mules. The 
day driver — a morbid hobo’ of moody habits — had 
disappeared. They found his moist remains in 
the tank while transferring the water to barrels. 
Whether he committed suicide or fell into the 
opening behind the seat never will be known, as 
we had no coroner. Anyhow, Mr. Simpkins was 
plainly annoyed and spoke with some bitterness 
of the carelessness of certain people intrusted 
with delicate missions. That tankload of water 
was reserved exclusively for the mules, and the 
camp wiggled along on emergency rations until 
another cargo could be brought from the river. 
The driver was buried in the sand with a broken 
neckyoke marking the spot— tombstone and epi- 
taph in one. 



201 




202 


On and Off 


The vanguard of civilization— two tinhorn 
sports, one barrel of whiskey and a poker table— 
reached the camp one lap ahead of the main ex- 
pedition. We had our saloon in full blast before 
the tented town was laid out. The tin-horn sports 
opened for business under a flaming canvas of 
red, white and blue, their idea being to please the 
optic nerve as well as tickle the vitals. They 
placed the barrel on end in the center of the tent, 
laid a board across the head for a bar and placed 
thereon half a dozen small-sized baking powder 
cans. The drinking cups bore the inscription, 
‘ ‘ Absolutely Pure, ’ ’ but this legend did not apply 
to the contents of the barrel. That fluid was of 
the brand now known as Biograph whisky— two 
drinks and you see the moving pictures without 
extra charge. 

Amid these surroundings I entered upon a new 
life among the Mormons and didn’t like the place. 
Poker was too rich for my blood, and the liquid 
Biograph films at 25 cents per can were beyond 
my means, so I devoted myself exclusively to 
building the Oregon Short Line. Those of you 
who glide in Pullmans along that route never 
dreamed, perhaps, that I was there ahead of you 
as chief engineer of a two-handled scraper and 
one span of pie-colored Mormon mules. 

Building railroads in the desert is quite roman- 


203 


The Bread Wagon 

tic at times, and, as few of the scraper hands have 
embalmed the sport in literature, I submit the 
foregoing details just to show what some men 
will do in order that others may ride — sometimes 
on passes. That makes it bad again. 

- At one part of our section the grade called for 
an embankment forty feet high, and we built it of 
fidgety alkali dust that burned the eyes and blis- 
tered the throat. The dry earth was hauled in 
scrapers from the level stretches and dumped at 
the head of the fill. Then man, mule and scraper 
tumbled in a free-for-all down the sloping bank, 
kicking up clouds of choking white dust that 
floated away on the breeze like blizzard snow. It 
took longer to build the embankment because of 
the wind and vast quantities of dust swallowed 
hv the busy toilers. For this job I pulled down 
$1.50 a day and board. They burned me out in 
two weeks, and I would have stayed and died, no 
doubt, but for an unconscious tip furnished by a 
tramp with St. Vitus’ dance. 

He came along one Sunday, twitching and jerk- 
ing like a marionette and whistling a merry tune. 
Nothing worries the genuine tramp so long as he 
isn’t working. That fellow was a phenom. He 
bore a pack of blankets, grub and two one-gallon 
water cans slung over his shoulders. In his right 
hand he carried a long handled frying pan, which, 









204 


He Came Along, Twisting and Jerking Like a Marionette. 97 


205 


The Bread Wagon 

in the throes of his affliction, he swung and waved 
and rattled like a Salvation Army lass with her 
tambourine leading the bass drummers on to 
glory. Dropping his pack and pan at the water 
barrel, the tramp stopped whistling and said, 
“Howdy, fellers; hot here, ain’t it?” Then he 
helped himself to Snake river water from Mr. 
Simpkins’ barrel. 

I am not making jest of human affliction, and I 
trust this true statement will find credence. In 
order to slake his thirst the jiggly tramp seized 
the dipper in both hands, filled it and rested the 
bottom on the rim of the barrel. In his weird 
contortions he spilled more than half the liquid 
and danced one and a half times around the bar- 
rel, still holding the dipper in position and slid- 
ing it along as he danced. Having swallowed all 
that didn’t get away from him, Mr. St. Vitus 
straightened up with a satisfied “ah” and looked 
the camp over. He seemed to like the idea of 
companionship, if only for a little while. So, 
gathering a bundle of sagebrush twigs, he built 
a fire and sliced some bacon which he fried in the 
long handled pan ; made a pot of coffee and dined 
within ten feet of w r here a bunch of us were sit- 
ting. 

That is what I call independence without any 
special declaration of the same. I have seen less 


206 


On and Off 

violent eases of this malady hopelessly immured 
in hospitals, and here was a victim whose very 
hair twitched with muscles run amuck. A thou- 
sand miles from nowhere, and at least another 
thousand to the next place, that writhing wan- 
derer showed his contempt for the heavy hand of 
fate, the usages of hospitality and the world in 
general. He tarried with us merely to save the 
precious water in his cans. After dining and 
carefully wiping the frying pan with a piece of 
gunny sack, Mr. St. Vitus packed up and two 
stepped, polkaed and waltzed himself away into 
the wilderness. Long after the sagebrush and 
dust hid his twitching form I heard the clatter of 
the faithful frying pan bumping his bony knee 
caps. 

Prom the visit of this tramp I evolved a plan 
of escape. When I resigned my mules and scraper 
the boss Mormon said I was crazy, but he gave 
me a time check, which the saloon proprietors 
cashed at a 50 per cent discount. Very kind of 
them. Doubtless they thought I needed the money. 
Meanwhile a tented store full of general mer- 
chandise and more whisky, had crawled into our 
community. There I purchased a new pair of 
overalls and a pair of brown canvas baseball 
shoes, with leather strips across the uppers— the 
kind of shoes Uncle Anson wore in his younger 


207 


The Bread Wagon 

days at Rockford, 111., which town is not far from 
Mudville, same State. Perhaps the baseball af- 
finity that claimed me in after years lay dormant 
in those canvas shoes, in which I tramped a mat- 
ter of five hundred miles. Stranger things have 
happened but generally they occur in fiction. 

Besides the shoes I amassed two empty syrup 
cans for water tanks, a small coffee pot and a tin 
pie plate in which to cook. A few pounds of self- 
rising flour, some ground coffee and a slab of 
bacon, or, rather the obese bosom of the female 
swine. These fancy groceries, added to' my blank- 
ets, made about all I could tote. 

An ancient overland trail through Idaho and 
Oregon crossed our camp at right angles. The 
St. Vitus dance man set out on that trail, and if 
he could hold the middle of the road, I, a young 
and robust boy, should, at least, keep the trail in 
sight. It was me to the Pacific Coast or bust. 
Bidding good-bye to the Mormons and Gentile 
hoboes, I turned my freckled nose toward the 
setting sun. Those rough but honest friends said 
I would fall by the wayside— die of thirst and 
starvation. Little did they wot that some day I 
would own a Bread Wagon and feed myself in 
luxurious indolence. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


A Problem in Rapid Transit and How it Was 
Solved with the Aid of a St. Vitus Dance Man’s 
Example and a Hobo Outfit. 

Here is a hot problem in rapid transit: From 
American Falls, Idaho, to the Pacific coast the 
distance, in ante-railroad days, was all of five 
hundred miles. I was a transient guest at the 
Falls and had nothing to speak of hut feet and 
a desire to keep moving. How did I get through 
the wilderness 1 ? The answer is easy. I walked, 
as a general thing, and did the sum in a little 
more than three months over an ancient stage 
trail, pausing at intervals for repairs and to earn 
a grub stake. 

About one day ahead of me on the dusty pike 
was another lone tramp, equipped with a bad case 
of St. Vitus’ dance and a long-handled frying pan. 
Whence he came and whither he hikest mattered 
little. His picturesque passage through a Mor- 
mon grading camp in the desert suggested to me 
the idea of quitting the railroad business and 
pushing forward on foot to the busy haunts of 
man. So I plagarized his traveling outfit to the 
smallest detail— frying pan, coffee pot, water cans 
208 


Maxing “Hobo” Bbead. 




t 



209 


210 


On and Off 


and blankets— and tore myself away from the 
Mormons. Those polygamous persons said I was 
hastening onward to my doom. That was better 
than to stop in one place and wait for the doom. 

Aside from a touch of loneliness when night 
shut in, hoofing the trackless desert wasn’t such 
a bad job. It was 90 per cent, better than driving 
mules on the railroad dump ; and when tired walk- 
ing I could run awhile, if so disposed, being my 
own boss. After the first day, on account of the 
heat, I switched my time card and walked at 
night. It was late in June when I started on this 
saunter, and the dry heat was intense. There 
were many long stretches between streams, and, 
on these lapses the faithful water cans enabled 
me to keep up a full head of steam. Rather than 
take desperate chances, I toted water every step 
of the way. 

Generally, though, I managed to reach a spring, 
water hole or stream after an all-night tramp, 
and there rested comfortably in the shade of the 
willows. If the stream appeared to have the 
goods, I hung my pack on a willow tree, got out 
my trusty fish line, captured a grasshopper and 
added fried trout to’ my regular fare of bread and 
bacon. Fresh bread daily, without the aid of an 
oven, is the main standby of the overland hobo. 
Here is the way we make and bake it: 


211 


The Bread Wagon 

My only utensil was the frying pan. In that I 
mixed a dough of self-rising flour and water. The 
loaf was shaped like a large doughnut, the hole 
in the middle being left to obviate that sad and 
soggy feeling noticeable' sometimes in open-air 
bread. I baked my loaf in the frying pan, over 
the fire until the bottom was cooked; then I 
propped the pan on edge alongside the blaze and 
allowed the reflected heat to bake the top. Better 
results, hobo cooks aver, are obtained in this 
manner than by turning the loaf upside down in 
the pan. The weight flattens the uncooked sur- 
face and spoils the artistic effect. Having no 
broom straws with which to tell when the bread 
was done, I tested the loaf with my teeth, and 
was doubly thankful, sometimes, I had such good 
strong teeth. A little gravy, like mother used to 
make, is very nice on this bread. 

For more than a week the only human form I 
saw was my own image in the pools from which 
I dipped up water. Being in no hurry, I spent a 
profitable lot of time fishing, and wasted some 
more wishing for a gun with which to slay jack 
rabbits. Every clump of sagebrush sheltered a 
family of long-eared jacks, and large colonies of 
unsettled rabbits hopped across the trail in the 
soft moonlight. 

One night I found a mule whip lying in the 



“One Night I Found a Mule Whip Lying in the Dust.” 

* 


212 


213 


The Bread Wagon 

dust, and just as I stooped over to pick it up the 
whip coiled and sprung its rattle^ My footwork 
in the sidestep getaway was so rapid the sudden 
start broke the strap that bound me to my pack, 
and I left it in the road. The rattler held his 
position and sent out repeated warnings that he 
was not to be monkeyed with; but I bombarded 
him with sand and bush tops, until he moved 
away and allowed me to recover the pack. After 
that, had I come across a mule whip, gold-handled 
and studded with diamonds, blazing in the light 
of a deceitful moon, I would have smothered the 
temptation to pick it up. Besides, I was making 
fairly good time without a whip. 

A little after daylight one morning I was pitch- 
ing my camp beside a purling streamlet, when a 
beauteous sound smote the air. It was a robust 
human snore, that started with a gurgle and 
wound up in a whistle. In a clump of bushes, so 
close to the stream his fevered feet were soaking 
in the water, lay a man rolled in blankets. When 
I spoke to him, he leaped up, pistol in hand, but 
seeing nothing but a frazzled kid, the stranger 
calmed down. He was heading for the effete 
East, and didn’t care how soon he got there, he 
said. Bellview, a mining camp on the W 7 ood 
river, was one day’s stroll to the westward, and 
if that was my destination, I had best be going, 


214 


On and Off 


the man intimated. Seeing he didn’t care for 
choice company, I cut out sleep for that day and 
hustled on to Bellview. 

I reached Wood river at dusk and was crossing 
a bridge built of logs, leading to the town, when 
a familiar yet puzzling sound broke out at the 
other end of the bridge. There seemed to he 
some one whistling an operatic air to a Chinese 
orchestra accompaniment. Then a form came 
twitching and jerking along in the gloaming. My 
mentor— my guide, the tramp with St. Vitus’ 
dance and the long stemmed frying pan, loomed 
up. It was the banging of his pan against the 
bridge rail that heralded the approach of an old 
friend. 

‘ ‘ Hello, sonny, ’ ’ he said between jerks. ‘ ‘ Where 
are you going?” 

“Into the town, ” I replied. “Anything doing?” 

“Well, I should say. Too hot there for me. 
This is Fourth of July and you’re just in time to 
see the fireworks go off. Hear ’em shooting up 
the town? Wish you luck.” 

Having jerked out this bulletin, the tramp 
moved away in the darkness, still whistling and 
beating haphazard time with the frying pan. 

Meanwhile our country’s natal day was being 
blown off to beat the band. It sounded like the 
published reports of the siege of Port Arthur, 


215 


The Bread Wagon 

with the wails of the maimed and dying tossed in 
on the side. The mining camp had but one street, 
a crooked thoroughfare following the bend of the 
river. Great bonfires .blazed in the middle of the 
street, and the grand illuminating effect was 
heightened by lanterns made of red paper on a 
framework of sticks hung on the shanties. In 
lieu of fireworks, the patriotic inhabitants let off 
guns and pistols loaded with balls, and the pop- 
ping was truly exhilarating. 

The main celebration raged in a big saloon and 
dance hall. Three or four rickety females took 
turns waltzing with half a hundred frenzied pa- 
triots, who employed each other as dancing part- 
ners until the ladies were at liberty. This terrible 
outburst of social grandeur and gaiety after my 
lonesome spell in the desert all but stunned me. 
Wishing to be patriotic and at the same time 
devilish, I left my pack outside the dance hall and 
treated myself to one glass of beer, which cost 15 
cents. This, I believe, is about the cheapest 
Fourth of July I ever put in. 

The soothing waltz strains fof that spirited 
revelry were produced by an aged blind negro, 
who sawed away in the comer on a fiddle with 
one string. Whenever the more reckless dancers 
piled up near him the blind negro turned in ter- 
ror and hovered his fiddle like a hen with a brood 
of chickens. 


216 


On and Off 


“Foh Gawd’s saik, gemmens, do be keerful!” 
be wailed. “Dey haint no moll snch fiddle strings 
wifin fob hundred mile of dis year place!” 

From which it will be seen the Committee on 
Music for that Fourth of July celebration was up 
against the real thing. The wool and whiskers of 
the sightless negro were white with age, and 
bodily infirmities had bent him almost double. 
How he got to that outlandish place and what was 
his regular business I do not know, for I then 
had troubles of my own and didn’t bother much 
with the affairs of other people. That night, re- 
gardless of the rattle of musketry, I slept sweetly 
in a sort of bam. In the morning I removed 
from a new set of harness a number of nice 
straps, needed to replace the ones on my pack 
broken in the encounter with the rattlesnake, and 
once more sought the dusty trail to the Pacific 
coast. 

Near the log bridge was a small boy boiling 
coffee at a camp fire. Close by in the woods 
stood a battered stage coach, with four skinny 
white horses tethered to the wheels, eating break- 
fast food in the rough. The boy said his pa, who 
was still celebrating in the town, owned the rig. 
They had come from Boise City, 160 miles away, 
with a stage load of fresh vegetables. Pa had 
cleaned up a nice wad of money selling cabbages 


217 


The Bread Wagon 

to the miners, and would start for Boise that day. 
Pretty soon papa stopped shooting up the camp 
and came down to the bridge for breakfast. I 
boned the old man for a ride to Boise, and he 
looked with favor on the proposition. He was 
very sleepy, expected to be more or less drowsy 
on the homeward trip of four days and would take 
me along, provided I could drive a four-in-hand. 
Of course I could, and the battered coach tooled 
across the log bridge with me on the box. 

The vegetable man curled up in the bottom of 
the coach and snored. There was nothing for me 
but to hold the reins, as the horses had too much 
sense to leave the trail. Sometimes the boy 
crawled inside and I had the entire Northwest to 
myself. Toward evening we encamped at a water 
hole just vacated by the St. Vitus’ dance man, 
setting out on his night tramp. Still, I felt con- 
fident of beating him to Boise City, if he contem- 
plated a visit to that place. Those were four 
grand days, tooling the four-in-hand, and I gaze 
with pride on my career as a stage driver. 

But one untoward incident marred this trip, 
and I was not to blame. Besides his bottled 
goods, the old man had bought a pair of high- 
heeled calfskin boots, for which he paid $15. In 
his waking moments the boots were his theme and 
glory. The second night out he was so far re- 


218 


On and Off 


covered as to sleep on the ground, using the new 
boots for a pillow. Field mice, or some equally 
ravenous rodent, banqueted on the $15 boots, eat- 
ing the feet off at the oily creases in the ankles. 
The rage and grief of the old man were awful to 
behold, and his frothings gave me a line on the 
folly of pinning one’s faith to earthly treasures. 
For the next two days the indignant and highly 
incensed old gentleman cursed every living thing, 
including birds of the air and monsters of the 
deep. 

At Boise I worked two weeks in a horse corral, 
and made a grub stake of $9. On the outskirts of 
the city I bumped into a queer specimen arrayed 
from top to bottom in buckskin garments with 
fringe on them— a regular Buffalo Bill. The 
knees of the buckskin pants had stretched and 
bagged to such a degree the owner looked like 
the hind legs of a horse walking backward. His 
outfit consisted of two small wagons hitched en 
train, four mules, one wife, three little children 
and a whole arsenal of rifles, shotguns and pis- 
tols. This terror of the plains was headed for 
the Blue Mountains of Oregon to make a fortune 
chopping wood. If I cared to join the expedition, 
he would haul my pack and let me walk beside or 
behind the wagons. That sounded like a good 
offer, and I jumped at it. 


219 


The Bread Wagon 

We led a royal gypsy life for weeks. Much of 
the time the woman drove, while Buffalo Bill and 
I ranged ahead on either side of the trail and shot 
jack rabbits, and with rabbit liver for bait I some- 
times fished in the cool of the evening. These 
products of plain and stream were shared in com- 
mon in a large pot, and when we had neither 
game nor fish I built a separate campfire and 
cooked my own bacon, bread and coffee. A rov- 
ing career begets a free and independent spirit 
quite pleasing to behold. 

Thus the long summer and the longer miles 
oozed away. Near Baker City, Ore., I shook Buf- 
falo Bill and toiled two weeks in a hay field for 
another grub stake. Then I joined an empty 
freight outfit going back to the coast— an outfit 
of four immense wagons and thirty mules in 
charge of one man. He took me along for com- 
pany and to help with the team, in return for 
which the big-hearted freighter fed me real ham 
and eggs in prodigious quantities. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


A Chapter Wherein the Bread Wagon Goes to 

Sea, But Soon Decides that Land is Better. 

Sometimes a fellow long divorced from liis 
regular occupation shows reluctance to buckle 
down to humdrum toil when it is thrust upon him. 
That was my fix at Portland, at the windup of a 
dusty promenade across Idaho and Oregon in a 
pair of canvas baseball shoes. The gay and debo- 
nair life of the desert wilds, freedom from conven- 
tion and sleeping in the open air unfitted me for 
the irksome confines of civilization. At last I had 
become a genuine thirty-third degree hobo, but 
didn’t exactly know what ailed me. That was the 
reason, perhaps, the four walls of the Portland 
Stove Foundry loomed up like a prison house. 

In vain did I struggle against the desire to 
jump my job— the first one of its kind since leav- 
ing Leadville nearly six months before. And I 
needed the money, too. The canvas shoes had 
blown up and sprung leaks in various places be- 
low the waterline, and my overalls stood in need 
of repairs and laundry attentions. The rest of 
my toilet consisted of a short coat, cotton shirt 
with collar attached, necktie and hat. All through 
220 


221 


The Bread Wagon 

my rambles I stuck to the tie— last remnant of 
respectability— or, rather, the tie stuck to me. 
The knot was jammed and I couldn’t undo it, let 
alone losing the tie. Thus I looked nice in spite 
of myself. 

My moulding tools had gone the Lord knows 
where; yet the Portland Stove Company grabbed 
at me when conscience impelled me to ask for 
work. The job was the making of lids for cook 
stoves. In size, weight, color and shape those cast- 
iron lids suggested the bread I had baked for my- 
self in the desert; and that reminder helped to 
render me restless and homesick. At the end of 
two days the longing to be free tore me away 
from the foundry, and I once more took the road. 
I beat a river boat to Kalama, from which point, 
it was said, the wheat trains to Tacoma, Wash., 
were downy beds of ease for wandering tour- 
ists. 

The man who piloted me against the wheat train 
had not consulted the latest guide book, for the 
grain was sacked and loaded on flat cars; no 
chance there for the stowaway. I allowed three 
trains to depart, and then took a desperate 
chance; piling into the caboose of the fourth and 
taking a seat on the toolbox. There was no one 
in the caboose but the rear brakeman and the 
conductor. The latter paid no heed to me until 


222 


On and Off 


the brakeman went forward; then the conductor, 
a young man with big, solemn eyes, looked me 
over and said: 

“Ticket, please.” 

“Haven’t any,” I replied. 

“Where are you going?” 

* ‘ Tacoma. ’ ’ 

“The fare is $4.” 

“I’m broke.” 

The conductor seemed prepared for the worst. 
Without word or gesture he turned away, and sat 
in an armchair at the side door of the caboose, 
hanging his heels to a crossbar higher than his 
head. He sat there at least an hour, looking out 
into the woods, while the train rumbled and 
jerked, I huddled on the tool box, shaken with 
nameless fear. Never had I met up with that 
kind of conductor in all my hobo career. Would 
he rise in slow frenzy and slam me out the open 
door, or merely crack me on the coco with an axe, 
were the agonizing questions I asked myself. 
Much of the time I did not breathe, and clammy 
moisture stood on my youthful brow. Not once 
did I take my eyes off the conductor. 

At length the train halted at a small station 
where a creosote works was in operation. Pine 
timbers for wharf building were treated with 
creosote, in vacuum to offset the ravages of the 


223 


The Bread Wagon 

teredo, or salt water worm. The conductor went 
out, leaving me on the tool box. When the train 
started the solemn-eyed railroader resumed his 
chair and motioned me to come near him. 

“I once knew an old fisherman at Tacoma,” 
said the conductor. “He had a wooden leg made 
of pine. It was his habit to stand for hours in 
the water washing his nets. One Sunday, on the 
way to church, the aged fisherman collapsed and 
fell on the street. The water worms had bored 
into the wooden leg and honeycombed it. When he 
fell the splintered wood stuck out through his 
pants, and large numbers of people fainted at the 
sight. As the old fisherman was very poor, his 
pals and the sawmill hands at Tacoma gave a 
benefit dance and got him a creosoted leg. It was 
built at the works we just passed.” 

After purging his system of this remarkable 
narrative the conductor once more lapsed into 
gloomy contemplation of the pine woods. Whether 
the story was true or the creosote works inspired 
it I do not know. And I was puzzled about my 
part— whether to laugh or to view the creosote 
leg as a profound scientific achievement. A gig- 
gle escaped me, and the conductor smiled. He 
had tried his story on the dog, and it was a suc- 
cess. Lucky laugh; also lucky dog. 

The conductor put the pump on me, and I told 


224 


The Bread Wagon 

him stories about my troubles and travels, after 
which he related some. Nothing more was said 
about railroad fare and tickets. We were chums, 
all right. It was after 6 o’clock in the evening 
when the train reached the outskirts of Tacoma, 
which town was so new it creaked. The foundry 
had closed for the day, but the conductor knew 
where the boss lived. He pointed out the house 
from the hurricane deck of the caboose, and 
slowed down the speed of the train so that I could 
get off and save the long walk back from the 
depot. After all, there is much in knowing when 
to laugh at the right time, but alas! my tact 
availed me nit. The Tacoma foundry didn’t need 
expert help, so next day I turned my prow to the 
sea. 

A big wooden ship, the Martha Rideout, of Bos- 
ton, was loading lumber for San Francisco-. I 
found her captain and another salt water skipper 
playing pool on a water-logged table in a saloon. 
While the master mariners banged the balls I 
hung in the background until my skipper beat the 
other fellow and hoisted in some free drinks, amid 
great laughter. Deeming the moment propitious, 
I butted in and asked the pool sharp to let me 
work my passage to ’Frisco on his ship. Talk 
about diplomacy and smooth work ! Such was the 


The Heathen Chinee Loaned Me His Overalls While I 
Washed Mine. 



225 



226 On and Off 

skipper’s good humor he placed his hand on my 
shoulders and said: 

“Why certainly, young fellow; go right 
aboard. ’ ’ 

I went right aboard, and helped stow soggy 
lumber in the hold, which job lasted fourteen 
days, working from daylight until dark. Then 
we towed up Mr. Puget’s Sound, sailed out 
through the straits and headed for the golden 
shores of California. Four days and nights I lay 
in the sail locker, the sickest hobo that ever 
plowed, harrowed and sowed the raging main. On 
the morning of the fifth day the Chinese cook 
slid back the door of the locker and tossed in a 
chunk of cold raisin duff the size of a cabbage. 
The lump rolled down under my nose, and I 
struggled feebly with the dawn of a newer and 
brighter life. Desire to live grew with the ab- 
sorption of the duff, and in a little while the whole 
mass disappeared. In a day or two I felt like a 
new hobo. The cook made up a bed for me on his 
chest in the galley, and when the ship neared 
Frisco that heathen Chinee loaned me a pair of 
his overalls while I washed mine, so as to make a 
flash at San Francisco. 

With $1.20 in my clean overalls pocket— a purse 
contributed by the sailors— I passed in at the 
Golden Gate, which so many find hinged on mud. 


227 


The Bread Wagon 

That was the way it swung for me. The ship dis- 
charged all hands save the captain, mate and 
cook, and I went ashore with the rest. In a short 
time I became demonetized, and there was no, 
work in sight. Night after night I went back to 
the Martha Kideout and sneaked into her fore- 
castle, via the bows of another ship lying along- 
side. The Chinese cook alone knew of my pres- 
ence. He kept the secret from the captain, per- 
mitted me to sleep in the forecastle and had al- 
Avays a little wooden tub of food hidden in the 
bunk I occupied. That Chinaman was the only 
friend I had in California, and when the ship 
cleai'ed for more lumber she left me bankrupt and 
starving. 

Dear old Sing Wall, I never expect to have 
another pal like him. When Sing sailed away I 
wept, but wouldn’t like my old friend, Dennis 
Kearney, of Sand Lot fame, to know about it. In 
later years Dennis and I got quite chummy, and 
wrote for the same paper in San Francisco. Also, 
I amassed a bank account in that same town. 
The bank busted, too, with my coin in it, but this 
story carries enough tough luck of its own with- 
out lugging in a Chadwicked bank. 

However, after Sing Wah left I became de- 
spondent and ill, and could get nothing to lay on 
my stomach. It would have lain, could I have 


228 


The Bread Wagon 

got anything solid. On the afternoon of the 
second day without food, far out in Valencia 
street, I found a dime, and I’ve never seen a sil- 
ver dollar that looked as big. Once in the pos- 
session of capital, there came the worry and care 
incident to safe investment and how to get the 
biggest returns, but I knew where to go. On 
lower Market street the curb was lined with fruit 
peddlers’ wagons. Each cart had a hoard nailed 
upright on the seat, and over the board was 
drawn a paper bag on which the hucksters posted 
the odds— 6 for 5, 13 for 10, and so on. After a 
careful inspection of the field, I played a long 
shot— sixteen large, bug-bitten Bartlett pears for 
a dime. 

The side pockets of my coat had broken 
through into the lining, which mishap made a 
sort of blind tunnel around my spine. Into this 
secret cavern I poured the sixteen pears, and had 
a grub supply for a couple of days. Whenever 
hunger assailed me, which was often, I reached 
in and hauled out a pear. 

Before famine time came on again I got work 
in a little jobbing shop in the residence dis- 
trict. The foundry was attached to the owner’s 
domicile, and he had started to splurge in 
the manufacture of piano plates. My first day’s 
toil netted about $5, piece work scale, and I asked 


I Landed Forty Feet Away. 



229 



230 


The Bread Wagon 

for some money with which to pander to the 
unnatural cravings of a man who agreed to 
hoard me. The boss handed out a $5 bill, 
which I gave to my landlord that night. Next 
day about noon the job and I became separated. 
A retired sawmill boiler furnished steam power 
for our works, and anyone who happened to think 
of it threw in coal or turned on the water. This 
fatal day the fellow who fired up forgot about 
the water, and pretty soon the boiler retired 
permanently from the scene. 

Sand, pig iron, piano plates and mechanics 
littered the landscape for half a square. I 
landed forty feet away, with my back to the 
wreck, and kept right on going. At the hotel 
I paused long enogh to coax a rebate of $2.50 
out of $5 given the landlord the previous even- 
ing. Then I made a bee line to Mare Island 
and shipped in Uncle Sam’s navy— went cruis- 
ing among the South Sea Islands in a warship. 
Life ashore was growing too strenuous for me, 
particularly when they fired a salute of one 
steam boiler just because I went to work at my 
legitimate trade. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


The Iloho Comes Ashore with a Bum Lamp and 

Ships as Pilot on a Canal Boat. 

A cruise of eighteen months in the ancient 
wooden warship, Wachusett, in the South Pa- 
cific, left me in shape to view the beauties of 
nature with one eye. Moreover, the Bread Wag- 
on came ashore with a flat wheel. An explosion 
on shipboard doused my starboard glim, and for 
a period of five months I did all my looking 
with the other eye. 

But Uncle Sam was good to his old ship- 
mate. He had me freighted, at government ex- 
pense, from South America to Brooklyn, and 
the eye carpenters there trimmed my lamp so 
that the sight was almost as brisk as before. 
Then they paid me off, and I set about ramb- 
ling some more. 

The mishap that came near wrecking a mild 
blue eye happened in the middle of the Pacific 
Ocean. One day a young ensign named Clark 
got busy with a gun’s crew of lobsters and 
tried to pass us out some Oral Instruction in 
Ordnance. That sounds pretty good, but it is 
bad for the eyes. To illustrate the lecture on 
231 


232 


The Bread Wagon 

Ordnance, the ensign removed the fuse-stock 
from a six-inch shell. This fuse was a metal 
cylinder three inches long, containing a loaded 
plunger fitted with a percussion cap. Mr. Clark 
took the plunger out of the cylinder to tell us 
how it worked and dropped the plunger. As it 
fell I stooped forward to pick it up; the cap 
struck a metal plate in the deck and exploded, 
and my faithful eye stopped the discharge on 
its upward flight. 

Now I know all about the workings of the per- 
cussion fuse for six-inch shells. Here are some 
of the details: My face was polka-dotted with 
minute chunks of scrapiron, and several lumps 
of burning powder lodged in the eyeball. The 
ship’s surgeon dug out the powder and bound 
my eye in a flour sack that had three large pur- 
ple Xs on it. We had the best of flour sacks. 
He said the wounds were nothing and that I 
would be all right in a few days. And so I 
would had they not sent me to stand lookout on 
the foretopsail yard in a wet gale. Cold set- 
tled in the injured eye, and my prospect of 
becoming an Admiral grew quite dull and 
blinky. 

For months I lurked on the gloomy lower 
deck away from the light, attired in a pair of 
goggles and a thick mantle of melancholy. I 



233 


thought a great deal about my past, but didn’t 
care to brood on the future. 

Our ship was at sea when my lamp went out, 
and we were forty-five days reaching the coast 
of Chile. After much coastwise cruising, fol- 
lowing the habit of warships afraid to go to 
sea, the tubby Wachusett fell in with the Pa- 
cific squadron at Valparaiso, and the assembled 
surgeons held a board of survey on my smoky 
headlight. Notwithstanding the eye was a fierce- 
looking proposition, the chief surgeon the mo- 
ment he beheld it exclaimed to the board: 

“Do you know, gentlemen, that I once had a 
valuable dog with an eye like that. He got it 
poisoned in the woods.’’ 

* The surgeon then grew intensely enthusiastic 
—over the dog— and went into details for the 
benefit of the doctors, who also seemed inter- 
ested. I did hear the dog’s name, but have for- 
gotten it. Any way, they packed me off on a 
British mail steamer, deck passage via the Isth- 
mus of Panama, to the Navy Yard at Brook- 
lyn. There I lingered three months in the Ma- 
rine Hospital, better known as the Stone Frig- 
ate, with eighty or ninety bunged and battered 
marines like myself. A splendid young doctor 
at the hospital worked on my lamp until final- 
ly he got the wick pricked up out of the oil and 
I could see a little of everything except money. 


235 


The Bread Wagon 

At length, one day, the main squeeze called 
me into his office and wanted to know if I had 
any home or friends. I mentioned the ancestral 
hall at Mudville, 111. A few days later they 
handed out my discharge from the navy and 
all the pay that was coming to me. 

Instead of seeking the fatted calf, I took a 
cheap steamer to Galveston, Tex., and eventually 
wound up on a cattle train, which was getting 
pretty close to the calf. An old-time winter was 
raging in Brooklyn, and I couldn’t stand the 
cold after the long sojourn in tropic lands and 
islands. From Galveston I went to San Antonio 
on the tin roof of a day coach in the night 
time, and struck a bully job climbing poles for 
the Bell Telephone Company, which was install- 
ing a system. At this congenial task I wore a 
complete man-of-war uniform and a pair of 
climbing spurs lashed to my shins. It was the 
uniform that lured me into the navy, and I 
wanted to get my money’s worth. People came 
miles to see me climb poles in that rig, for storm- 
tossed marines were said to be scarce in the 
heart of Texas at that period. Ever and anon 
I hung by one ear from the crossbar of a tele- 
phone pole, and the people felt amply repaid 
for their trouble. 

Thus I continued to ramble and to roam until 


236 


On and Off 


I went to the bad at Waco. While loafing 
around a livery stable, expecting to get a job 
driving bus To and From, a gentleman who said 
he liked my appearance offered me a situation 
as traveling companion to two carloads of un- 
sophisticated steers. The deal was closed at 
once. He gave me a pass, a. lantern and a 
long pole with a nail at the end, and the steers 
and I started for Chicago. I punched the ani- 
mals as far as St. Louis and then grew tired 
of beef on the hoof. My personally conducted 
tour collapsed, and, while the unhappy steers 
went on alone to Mr. Armour, I switched off 
and worked the Alton road as far as Peoria, 111., 
looking for foundry jobs. , 

The advent of summer had closed most of the 
« shops, so I cut across on the Wabash to Keo- 

kuk, la., intending to take the river to the Gulf 
and go to sea some more. On this box-car dash 
through Western Illinois I passed within twenty 
miles of Mudville, which town had had no bulletins 
from me in three years ; but I did not stop off, 
having neglected to make my fortune while ab- 
sent. 

There is at Keokuk a government canal, under 
river and harbor auspices. The man in charge 
of the canal had a relative high in naval cir- 
cles, and my talk, togs and papers made a hit 


237 


The Bread Wagon 

with him. Wherefore, I slid gracefully into a 
berth as lineman on a government steamboat at 
$40. per month and board. 

My success instilled vast quantities of bitter- 
ness in the bosoms of certain youthful Keokuk- 
ians, who were educated for the canal, so to 
speak, by swimming, fishing and falling into 
it since birth. But, alas ! those hopeless aspir- 
ants had no man-of-war uniforms. Neither was 
there a boy among them who had an eye almost 
blown' out in the service of his country, and 
could talk with the Boss about squadrons and 
things. It was me for the soft snap, all right, 
and I could have been the sassiest brat on the 
river. Maybe I was. 

Just the same, I bulged to the front and got 
promoted to pilot on a little towboat so small 
there was just room for myself, the boiler and 
Mr. T. Foley, engineer, in the order named. 
Sometimes, when cramped for space, I used to 
get out on the bank to turn myself around, and 
Mr. T. Foley was wont to do the same. I 
might have commanded a bigger boat, but for 
the enmity of the chief pilot of the canal fleet. 
One Sunday the old man spun a yarn about an 
immense tooth of some kind he found in the 
river. I foolishly asked him if the tooth came 
out of the mouth of the river. Two or three 


238 


On and Off 


mutts laughed, and the chief pilot thought I 
was guying him. He never got over it. In re- 
viewing the past it occurs to me I might have 
been too fresh for fresh water sailing— and in 
a canal, at that. 

However, promotion is not always what it 
seems. As already stated, the boat I commanded 
was fully loaded with myself, the boiler and Mr. 

. T. Foley, seated in the order named, and we 
had no room to carry a cook. This slight kink 
in the promotion business compelled me to board 
ashore, at the same wages, and my finances 
didn’t do so well. Still, we did valiant service 
for the United States and Keokuk, towing small 
barges of stone in the dead waters of the canal. 

The name of this boat was 4 4 The Messenger, ’ ’ 
and I deemed the handling of her my master- 
piece in the art of perilous navigation. The Mes- 
senger was about as speedy as the boys who 
wear a blue uniform bearing that label. One 
day we ventured into the mighty current of 
the Mississippi. I headed the Messenger up- 
stream and steamed full speed for three hours 
in the shade of one tree on the bank; then I 
whistled for help, and a real tug came out and 
got us. 

But what could you expect of a boat blighted 
with that name? 


239 


The Bread Wagon 

Late in summer the fleet moved down to 
Quincy, 111., and built a wing dam from the 
Missouri shore. They reduced me from pilot 
on the Messenger to deck hand on a larger boat 
that rated a cook. The pay was still the same, 
but my income was nearly doubled by the re- 
duction in rank, and that helped a lot. While 
wing-damming the river I witnessed one end of 
a moist love affair that bordered on the pathetic, 
and once more impressed upon me the peril of 
monkeying with tender passion. 

Our chief engineer on the boat, an elderly fat 
man, had an affair of the heart ashore, there 
being no ladies in the fleet. One evening the 
aged engineer put on his heart-breaking clothes. 
He wore a white vest, plug hat and gloves, and, 
with a fragrant bud in the lapel of his Prince 
Albert, he set out to visit the fair Quincy dame. 
The steamboat lay with her bow moored to 
the bank, the stern being swung out a little from 
the shore, after the manner of river craft. There 
was a stage plank forward, but none aft. Some 
painters at work on the after part of the upper 
deck had left the end of a plank projecting 
from the roof, and the pale, fickle moon threw 
a heavy, elongated shadow of this plank from 
the lower guardrail to the shore. The dark 
streak looked just like a staging. 



240 


He Started to Walk Ashoke on the Shadow. 



241 


The Bread Wagon 

Well, the elderly engineer came out of his 
room, the flame of love flickering brightly be- 
neath the white vest, and started to walk ashore 
on the shadow. It broke before he had gone 
two steps. We got a flash of his splash and a 
glimpse of his bald head ere the laughing waters 
closed over it. “Man overboard!” shouted the 
second engineer, and two or three small boats 
put off to the rescue. 

The bald scalp bobbing along in the swift 
current served as a beacon, and sometimes a 
broad surface of the white vest rolled into view 
as the fat engineer lunged and kicked in fran- 
tic endeavor to reach shore. “Laura!” he yelled 
at intervals. “Oh, Laura, save me!” That 
may have been the name of the lady. We over- 
hauled him 300 yards below the steamboat. The 
plug hat was never again seen by mortal eye — 
probably it filled and sank, never to win an- 
other trusting heart. 

O’wing to the state of his wind and wardrobe, 
the fat engineer sent regrets that night to the 
lady of his choice. When she heard how he 
fell overboard that fickle dame also sent back 
regrets and the ring, and thus another rosy 
dream blew up. Verily, he that is in love 
walks upon a shadow. 


CHAPTER XX. 


A Maiden Seeks His Hand in Wedlock but He 

Sidesteps the Proposition. 

When a spotless maiden offers her heart and 
hand to a wandering liobo, Love is either blind 
or wears one eye in a sling. At least this is 
my belief, founded on painful experience with 
the tender passion. Being obliged to resign from 
a canal boat at Keokuk, la., on account of ice in the 
winter of 1885, 1 went South to save the price of an 
overcoat, and accepted the position of assistant pi- 
lot on a furniture wagon at New Orleans. Another 
fellow drove, and I steered bureaus and 
bulky bedsteads up flights of narrow stairs built 
like well augers. In this genteel manner I 
amassed a neat but not gaudy sustenance in fair 
weather, for when it rained my salary and meals 
paused at the same moment. 

When not cruising in the wagon I roomed 
at the home of a German woman in an humble 
quarter of the city. She had a grown family, 
two of the girls being at home. Lulu was nine- 
teen and reveled in a beau, a thin, pallid per- 
son, who wore in his shirt what I believed, at 
242 


243 


The Bread Wagon 

that time, to be a diamond. Sadie had seen 
but sixteen summers and waded in the muck of 
as many winters. Plump and rosy, and with 
a great rope of yellow hair hanging down her 
back, she pined in secret. The mother dropped 
the flag on anything that looked like a beau, and 
in the sanctity of home Sadie dreamed of the 
misty future when she would trot in double 
harness with her ideal. Poor, deluded maiden! 

As an annex to the family there dwelt in 
a cracker box in the back yard two sickly runt 
pigs — Henrietta and Myrtle. Their abode was 
not a joyous one. Stunted in body and mind 
and fretful in confinement, Henrietta and Myr- 
tle grew peevish, morose and melancholy. They 
fought and squealed like married sisters liv- 
ing in one house, but the tragic finish was draw- 
ing on apace. 

On Sundays, in the evening • and on rainy 
days, when the furniture wagon hit bottom and 
stuck fast, I loitered in the bosom of the German 
family. We always were there in a bunch, and 
I batted 300 or better in the entertainment class. 
My repertory included a cruise in a United 
States warship; and the marvelous tales of hair- 
breadth escapes and things that oozed from me 
won Sadie’s admiration and turned her golden 
plait a shade lighter. Also, I embroidered 


244 


The Bread Wagon 

for her a silken star of great magnitude and 
beauty, such a star as the naval bluejacket wears 
on the crown of his flat cap. With a set of 
the hoops brought from the ship and some col- 
ored silk thread I built a multi-pointed star 
that made the entire household blink. At the 
same time, I enmeshed Sadie’s budding passion, 
but was not wise to the fact I had started some- 
thing that wouldn’t stop. 

On the afternoon of the same day the mother 
invited me to murder Henrietta. The pigs in 
the cracker box could go the route no longer, 
and a tearful family council decided on Henri- 
etta. I never had assassinated any swine; but, 
with the prestige of my warless war record and 
the silken star gleaming like a halo on my brow, 
I agreed to shed blood. So they brought the 
doomed Henrietta to me in the kitchen, where 
the family assembled, a prey at once to furtive 
pain and fresh pork. 

Grasping the piglet around the middle in one 
hand, as though she was a sausage, my faithful 
penknife flashed, and Henrietta yielded up about 
one spoonful of life’s crimson fluid. I scalded 
the remains in a small dinner pot, scraped and 
dressed them, and split the immature spine 
from snout to tail with the penknife, the only 
weapon employed in the crime. The job was 


ACHHimtU 

UtlHKLE/NE. 

HENRIETTA! 



The Great Pig-Sticking Scene From Dryden’s Loye 
Romance. 


245 



246 


On and Off 


done beautifully, if I do say it. From that 
moment the love-stung Sadie worshipped at 
my shrine. I was her unconscious hero in every- 
thing, pig-sticking included; and none but her 
modest self knew the sweet story of untold 
love. 

As an Ideal I struck high O in two long 
jumps. Any man who could in a single day 
merge the fine arts of the ancients with the 
abattoir instincts of Armour & Co 1 , stood out 
from the common herd a beacon of love and hope 
and happiness eternal. All I knew was that 
from day to day Sadie sat as usual in the home 
circle, listening to my lies, jokes, repartee and 
bonmots, mostly about furniture in misfit houses. 
I never saw her alone, and never thought of 
doing so, for that matter; but all the while the 
silken star stunt and the autopsy • I held on 
Henrietta were getting in their fatal work. 

At length there came a day when the furniture 
wagon palled on my thirst for conquest, and 
I shipped as cook on a Northern tugboat bound 
up-river. A farewell party in my honor was 
pulled off in the German family. The mother, 
Lulu and her pallid beau, his alleged diamond, 
the married sister, her baby and husband, who 
worked in a shot tower, and a few social neigh- 
bors assembled to see me off. We lapped up 


247 


The Bread Wagon 

several scuttles of suds and I never was in 
better form. Not until later did I recall Sadie 
was not among those present. In fact, I failed 
to note her absence. At the break-up of the 
party I dispersed to the tugboat and slept in 
a bedless bunk below the wash of the tide. 

Early the next morning a sad-faced messenger 
arrived with a note from Lulu concerning her 
little sister. Sadie had cried all night and un- 
til 2 o’clock in the morning. The reason she 
sidestepped the farewell party was because she 
loved me and feared she would break down 
and show it. The note wound up with a re- 
quest for me to return at once to 1 Sadie. This 
great trouble, sprung so suddenly, inspired me 
to show the note to the coarse, able seamen on 
the tug. I wanted advice. Some of them looked 
curiously at me and others laughed; but when 
I proposed to go back they grew alarmed and 
tried to dissuade me. Just the same, I went, 
and found the old lady alone in the sitting 
room. She treated me with deference and re>- 
spect. 

“What seems to be gnawing Sadie?” I asked, 
being impervious to Cupid’s dart, and there- 
fore fluent of speech. 

“I don’t know,” said the mother. “Sadie is 
such a funny girl. She didn’t appear to care 


248 


On and Off 


for fellows until she had the spell last night. ’ ’ 

“You don’t think I’ve trifled with her!” 

“No, indeed,” replied the mother, much dis- 
tressed. “She’s in the kitchen. Go and talk 
to her.” 

In the kitchen Sadie stood at the table with 
her bare arms reposing on a pile of dishes in 
the center of a large pan. She had been weep- 
ing, and a smothered sob racked her bosom 
when she saw me. Being aware that washing 
dishes exercises a morbidly unwholesome effect 
on girls of sixteen, I took Sadie by the hand 
and towed her gently into the back yard. This 
was indeed a bad break, for when the troubled 
maiden beheld Myrtle biting splinters in the 
bottom of the cracker box, the scene conjured 
up visions of the departed Henrietta and the part 
she had played in our young lives. 

The poor child broke down utterly. She laid 
her head on my shoulder and cried. In me 
there arose a series of sensations the exact lo- 
cation of which I do not now recall. I felt 
shocked and foolish by turns, and yet guiltless 
of intent in bringing about such a calamitous 
episode. For want of better action, I feebly 
stroked Sadie’s dejected, dish-watery hand, and 
begged her to cheer up. Sadie was pretty and 
nice, and all that, and her distress filled me 


249 


The Bread Wagon 

with vast anguish. How I mentally cursed the 
silken star and Henrietta, the victim of those 
subtle wiles will never know. 

“Why don’t you stay here?” she asked, com- 
mandingly. “You’ve traveled enough and seen 
all the world; and we like you. Some day a 
boat will sink, and that will be your end.” 

I explained the reasons for shifting my base 
of operations, but the plan did not suit Miss 
Sadie. 

“If you will stay here in New Orleans,” she 
went on, softly, sweetly and tenderly, “my 
brother-in-law will get you a job in the shot 
tower, where you can earn enough to keep us 
both. ’ ’ 

Had a large shot tower fallen on the back of 
my neck it couldn’t have jarred any more. My 
works stopped, like those of a watch dropped 
from a height, and when the works resumed it 
occurred to me I was confronting a crisis. The 
first and only formal proposal of marriage ever 
slammed at me had landed, and I was taking the 
full count. Holy smoke ! With the skill of 
the quick and ready liar I handed the girl a 
fragrant bunch of paper flowers. 

“Sadie,” I said, “It makes me dizzy to toil 
in shot towers. Moreover, I’m under contract 
to go in the tugboat, and if I desert now I’ll 


250 On and Off 

be hanged by the neck until dead. Could you 
stand that!” 

A mist of tears clouded the blue eyes, quench- 
ing the love beams there, and I hastened to pass 
another bouquet over the footlights. 

“But when I’ve cooked everything they have 
in the boat, then will I come back to you,” I 
promised. 

She took that as my pledge to be her sturdy 
oak, and Sadie would be my clinging vine. Then 
I plastered a chaste and rapid salute upon her 
blushing cheek, deeming it my duty, and hiked 
out for the river front, bound to the maiden who 
loved me for my deeds alone. 

At this point, gentle reader, we jump a lapse 
of twenty years, during which I heard no more 
of Sadie. A few days ago I straggled back to 
New Orleans and fell to thinking of the little 
blue-eyed girl with the golden braid. Some- 
how men will do those things. Maybe it’s van- 
ity. However, I set out digging up the past. 
The old home was all broken up, but I found 
Lulu in the neighborhood. She was pleased and 
likewise scared to see me, since I was supposed 
to be dead. A boat that sailed the day I left 
twenty years before went under with all hands. 
My friends thought I took the derelict, and had 
mourned me all those years. 


251 


The Bread Wagon 

Still, with my corpse eliminated, the meeting 
was a happy one. A spasm of pain crossed 
Lulu’s face when we shook hands and she got 
a flash of my $18 diamond ring. Did that spark- 
ling gem remind her of the pallid beau, who, 
like myself, proved fickle? Heaven forbid! It 
shocked me some to learn that Sadie had mar- 
ried two years after my death, but I couldn’t 
blame her for that. Lulu directed me to the 
place, and I went to call for old time’s sake. 

Sadie knew me, in a minute, and blushed as 
she led me by the hand, as I had led her into 
the backyard twenty years ago 1 , only our senti- 
ments, time-tempered, were vastly different. For 
an hour we talked, avoiding the shot tower, and 
then the subject of love’s young dream came up 
and we both laughed. 

“My! but I was stuck on the men in those 
days,” she said. 

From the tone I inferred Sadie was not stuck 
on them now since she had married one. That’s 
different. Meanwhile, Sadie dispatched fleet cour- 
iers into the neighborhood to round up the child- 
ren for my inspection. She brought out the 
silken star I made, twenty years ago, and the 
sight of it pleased me much. I was glad about 
the star, and a warm spot glowed in my breast 
for the woman who had not forgotten. Soon 


252 


On and Off 


the children came whooping in, led by a plump 
and rosy girl with the golden braid down her 
back— the Sadie of twenty years ago. My 
thoughts grew lumpy, and a wistful look stood 
in the mother’s eyes when I took the little fat 
hand and caressed it. 

‘ ‘ This is Henrietta ; my eldest, ’ ’ the woman 
said simply. 

Like one stricken dumb, I bent my head in 
silent awe and wonder. That well-spring of hu- 
man devotion was too deep for my rope. Eight 
there dawned the conviction that the first open- 
ing buds of true love, larded with pork and mus- 
tard in the virgin breast, can never, never die; 
for Henrietta, you remember, was the name of 
the pig whose death gave birth to my romance. 
And, oh, how lightly had I cast aside the fit- 
ful god, who comes not at set command! 

At once I became a Blighted Being and wad- 
dled away without another word for one more 
look at the shot tower. There was I old and 
beefy and bald, plugging on alone through life. 
Twenty years of bliss gone forever, and years 
of misery, perhaps, yet to come. The shot tower 
still stood where I spurned it in the burning 
past. Moss and ivy draped the tall stone shaft, 
and the base had gone to ruin. A policeman 
told me the institution on which I might have 


253 


The Bread Wagon 

reared a happy home had been closed down more 
than fifteen years. Of course, that helped some, 
and yet I am not satisfied. Lurking there in 
the shadow of that busted shot works, the might- 
have-been rose up to reproach me. Dimly, as 
in a fog, I saw a phantom doorway. Above the 
door a phantom sign: “C. Dryden, Esq., Fancy 
Sewing and Pork Butcher.” Beyond the portal 
a circle of little faces and a glowing fireside at 
$11 per ton. 

Too soon the picture faded, giving way to the 
dull horrors of a sunny front room for a single 
gent; references given and required; bath op- 
tional, where these bleeding lines were written. 
Oh, well; what’s the use? Let the dead past stay 
dead. I don’t care. There must be something 
wanting in the sentimental side of my make-up. 
Either I am not a ladies’ man or else I lacked the 
nerve to take a chance. Which is it? 


CHAPTER XXI. 


He Dabbles Some in Art, Ends His Hobo Ca- 
reer, and Becomes a Chicago Journalist. 

There comes an end to all things— even the 
lure of tramp life and the ceaseless hunt for 
jobs. Having held the center of' the stage for 
many weeks, shining the tin on myself in the 
role of Hobo, I will now get good and dabble 
in Art and Literature, after crowding the wind- 
up of a coarser career into one paragraph. 

Following the pathetic love affair at New 
Orleans, I returned to the canal at Keokuk, la., 
for the summer. That winter I starred as a 
night watchman in a drain tile factory, toting 
a time clock to record my movements, and fight- 
ing off hoboes who wanted to pound their ear 
in the shelter of the kiln sheds. The next sum- 
mer those who looked high enough could see 
me, far up in a glass pilot, house, steering the 
lake steamer City of Milwaukee between the 
ports of Grand Haven, Mich., and the Wisconsin 
village the beer made famous. What an easy 
guess. Later in the season I stoked a tugboat 
that yanked lumber schooners in and out of 

254 


255 


The Bread Wagon 

sawmill towns, and then sought refuge from the 
strenuous life in a West Side Chicago foundry. 
And this is where I begin to curb the nomadic 
spirit and grow genteel and recherche. 

For quite a spell crayon portraiture, self- 
taught, as a side line to iron molding, did not 
strike me as incongruous. Nothing is that way 
—in Chicago— and I combined these arts with 
profit until a female patron put me out of the 
picture business. My system was to watch the 
death notice column in the daily papers and hustle 
for trade among relatives of the deceased. One 
Sunday a woman in South Halsted street gave 
me a commission. Her little girl, of whom she 
had no picture, passed away, and the mother 
asked me to dash off a life-sized crayon por- 
trait of the girl from a photograph of her small 
brother, whom she resembled. 

“Can you make her hair long and curly and 
part it in the middle, with some frizzes in front?” 
the woman asked, eyeing my rough and calloused 
foundry digits in some doubt. 

I looked at the photo of a boy, whose short 
hair and projecting ears were his only claims to 
beauty, and I said I would extend my artistic 
temperament in the effort to make a girl of him. 

“As for clothes,” the mother went on, con- 
juring up a mental picture of the absent one, 



256 


I Struggled to Change the Sex of that Photograph. 




257 


The Bread Wagon 

“I want her to have a delaine dress, moss rose- 
bud pattern, box plaited with velvet reveres, 
and double flounces around the bottom.” 

“Will you have the dress hooked or buttoned 
in the back?” I asked vaguely, thinking she 
might not be’ quite up in the prevailing style. 

“Pearl buttons look very— but never mind,” 
she said, rather abruptly it seemed. “The back 
won’t show in a front view picture.” 

So I took the photograph of the floppy-eared 
boy and went away, a crushed and baffled cray- 
on artist right from the jump. For seven nights, 
after foundry hours, and two Sunday matinees, 
I struggled to change the sex of that photo- 
graph. Ringlets and frizzes grew all right un- 
der the magic touch of my crayon point, and 
the fleecy cloud effect in the background was 
great; but the delaine dress, with velvet reveres 
knocked me out. In all my varied pursuits I 
had neglected to take up dressmaking; and that 
one job so disgusted me with portrait work I 
mailed the photo to the woman and buried my 
blasted hopes still deeper in the sand at Mr. 
Crane’s foundry. Gentle females, they say, have 
helped man in worthy enterprises. Oh, tut, tut! 

One day I met B. Arthur Johnson of North 
Henderson, 111., which place is not far from Mud- 
ville. While B. Arthur was being shoved with 


258 


On and Off 


honors, through our college at Mudville, I was 
learning the iron trade, that eventually helped 
me into trouble in various parts of the world. 
When we met in Chicago in 1887, B. Arthur was 
a journalist on the Mail, an evening adjunct to 
the Times, since deceased. Kirke La Shelle, pres- 
ent owner of a bunch of New York theatres and 
a lot of other good things, conducted the literary 
end of the Mail. And F. P. Dunne, the Dooley 
man, was city editor of the Times. 

Well, B. Arthur Johnson took a violent interest 
in my future and pestered me two years with a 
bold proposition to break into literature. B. 
Arthur stuck to me like a ton of yellow fly-paper. 
He haunted me at my boarding house. He in- 
vited me to his hall bedroom abode and listened 
to the tales that flowed out of me as the contents 
of the pitcher flowed in. B. Arthur, journalist, 
said if those yams were written as related I 
needn’t work in foundries. He had a softer snap 
for me. I was too modest and refused to believe 
the good news ; but the faithful B. Arthur kept 
plugging my game from the outside, while Dunne 
and La Shelle, interested by the unselfish John- 
son of North Henderson, strove to yank me into 
the fold. 

Once I was about to yield and become a jour- 
nalist, when Johnson unwittingly crabbed his 


259 


The Bread Wagon 

own proposition. We were strolling out Robey 
street one sloppy Sunday in winter, and Johnson, 
the journalist, was picturing the joys of a literary 
career in Chicago. Ahead was a ragged laborer. 
As he walked his broken shoes gaped open just 
above the heels, exposing warm streaks of bright 
red wool. 

“Do you know, I envy that man,” said B. 
Arthur. 

“Why?” I asked. 

“He has socks.” 

All thought of invading the world of letters for- 
sook me, and the careless B. Arthur lost just one 
year of earnest missionary work. Probably he 
was joking about the socks. I’ll give him the 
benefit of the doubt; but, at the same time, I did 
not yearn for a profession that could not haber- 
dash itself. Finally, I wrote a long story, using 
a short pencil, about a Mudville inventor who 
went broke and bankrupted his friends trying to 
perfect a device to make cows come home and get 
milked. The Mudville cows stayed out nights, 
flirting with steers in the next pasture, and the 
invention would have been a winner had it 
worked. 

Having seen pictures of poets and authors 
carrying manuscript for publication, I rolled my 
story into a tight little cylinder and tied a string 


srm m 



260 


Mr. Dunne, He Said, Was Vastly Tickled oyer My Flow of Language, 


261 


The Bread Wagon 

around it. La Skelle, who had to peel my literary 
sausage, said afterward he could have chucked 
away the whole business, only he had wasted two 
years trying to get me started. 

When this story was printed in the Sunday 
edition of the Times the faithful B. Arthur John- 
son came panting to my beanery. Mr. Dunne, he 
said, was vastly tickled over my flow of language 
and wanted me to go to work as a word hanger 
and draper and thought decorator on the daily 
staff. La Shelle and Johnson ribbed me up to 
tackle the editor for $20 per week, but I would as 
soon have thought of asking for a job as bank 
president. Anyhow, the boarding house reeked 
with subdued excitement when the inmates dis- 
covered a journalist in their midst. As for mine, 
I was scared stiff— felt like a man doomed to the 
scatfold the day I started to spellbind the Chicago 
populace— March 11, 1889. 

The landlady and I held a conference that 
morning as to whether the ethics of my new pro- 
fession permitted a journalist to carry his dinner 
to the job. I owned a tin pail that rated a knife 
and fork in a metal scabbard on the side. In the 
bottom was a soup subway, and above that some 
tin galleries for cold corned beef and pie, the 
whole surmounted by a jam observatory that re- 
sembled the nozzle on a $90 camera. I actually 


262 


On and Off 


started for the Times office lugging this pail, but 
got cold feet, went back and compromised on a 
sandwich in my pocket. Also, I carried a full 
length lead pencil that had a rubber eraser at 
one end and a needle point at the other. 

La Shelle introduced me to Dunne, who spread 
the salve on thickly and refrained from noticing 
my hands in which pots of molten metal fitted 
easier than lead pencils. 

“How much per week do you want?” asked 
Dunne. 

“Same as I get in the foundry.” 

“And how much is that?” 

“Eighteen dollars,” I feebly replied, which 
was raising the limit $6, but Dunne didn’t know 
that, and I got my price. La Shelle jumped me 
later for not sticking out for the $20; hut, then, 
I had my doubts. The idea of a lumpy galoot 
like me, who had lived the life of a Siwasli In- 
dian, ramming into a newspaper shop and de- 
manding $20 per week, was a proposition that 
made my scalp flutter. Just the same fourteen 
years of ragged-edge schooling on the underside 
of the world kept me in the business once I got 
started. My habit for years was to read the daily 
papers from top to bottom, and I was, therefore, 
loaded with language, spelling, padding, punctua- 


263 


The Bread Wagon 

tion, syntax, wind and other essentials without 
knowing it. 

While waiting to be sent out for the purpose 
of enlightening the public, I sat in the office and 
looked at the journalists. Old and young men 
slid in and out and wrote and spat and cussed. 
One man had removed his coat and uncoupled 
his starboard suspender to give his inkarm freer 
action. A horn-handled pistol stuck out of his 
hip pocket, and on his left bosom was a badge as 
big as a fried egg. I thought he owned the paper. 
Once I made a bluff at scribbling something, just 
to seem busy; but my mouth was so hot and dry 
and caked I couldn’t get any thought-juice on my 
pencil point. 

Pretty soon the editor sent me off on a job — a 
baseball insurrection in an orphan asylum at 
Thirty-fifth street and Lake avenue; only he 
didn’t tell me that, I found it out myself. Spring 
was coming, and the little boy orphans took to 
slamming a ball in the narrow confines of the 
asylum yard. The matron called the game on ac- 
count of broken glass. A large and rebellious 
orphan named Bradley had spent the previous 
summer on the poor farm at Jefferson, where 
they had a forty acre field without any panes of 
glass in it. He led an uprising of three small 
orphans— one shortstop, catcher and riglitfielder 


264 On and Off 

—who ran away with Bradley to play ball on the 
poor farm. 

At that time our beloved Uncle Anson was 
skating around the world on his stomach with the 
Champion Colts, and All-Americans. In a hurst 
of inspiration little short of miraculous I named 
the ringleader of the baseball insurrection Old 
Anse Bradley, because he was such a kicker, and 
spun out the adventures of the three young play- 
ers he released and left stranded ovef night in a 
garbage box at the corner of Wabash and Lake. 
This story was turned in to a ferocious copy 
reader whose pipe threw off the aroma of a back- 
yard bonfire. While he read it I sat in the ad- 
joining room, hot and cold by turns; then moist 
and clammy. My first stab at journalism, right 
off the reel, was undergoing the test, and I suf- 
fered the torments of a fellow hung up by the 
thumbs. Without going into details— shining the 
tin on myself some more— Old Anse Bradley 
passed muster and I became a reporter of plain, 
blue, purple, old gold, green, yellow and vari- 
tinted facts, but never once aspired to the exalted 
realm of journalism. 

The story of Bradley was more or less uphols- 
tered, but one day I produced a plain, true tale 
about a Chicago hospital for women, omitting all 
names and localities. While I worked in the 


265 


The Bread Wagon 

foundry one of the girl coremakers was operated 
on for tumor. They employ girls in Chicago iron 
factories, toiling their young lives away in the 
dirt and gloom so as to live and die above re- 
proach and wear velvet plush to and from the 
shop. Well, the female surgeon did a neat job 
on the tumor, and, after sewing up the patient 
with silver wire, a nurse found that one of the • 
antiseptic sponges used in the operation was miss- 
ing. Much against her will, the head surgeon 
broke the stitches, opened the patient and re- 
trieved the canned sponge. In my story the lady 
doctor said : 

“I’m glad my attention was called to this little 
matter, for that sponge is worth sixty cents.” 

Editor Dunne said I was the most picturesque 
liar ever lassoed in Chicago ; but he liked the liter- 
ary tone of the article, and he printed it. Sev- 
eral weeks later there came a letter from the 
woman surgeon of a certain Chicago hospital, in- 
closing my sponge story, clipped from the Boston 
Medical Journal, the only thing she read. She 
was quite sarcastic, and said that, while these 
trifling mishaps will occur in the best of hospitals 
the writer of the article showed greater famili- 
arity with slang than with the more delicate tech- 
nique of the medical profession. 

Thus did sweet vindication come my way. Edi- 


266 


The Bread Wagon 

tor Dunne shook my horny mitt and took back 
all he said about my being a prolific and tireless 
liar. Backed up by this indorsement, everything 
I write must be true. If you don’t believe it, 
ask Mr. Dooley and Rube Waddell. 

The End. 















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